


It's Not Real

by Blissymbolics



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Basically a black mirror AU, Coming Out, Depression, Eddie's good at twitter, Flashbacks, Heavy Language, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Online Harassment, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Suicide Attempt, Phones but too much, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Self-Medication, Suicidal Thoughts, Tweets referencing many triggering topics, Vomiting, discussions of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24433630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blissymbolics/pseuds/Blissymbolics
Summary: I’m gay. I don’t have anything deeper to say at the moment. But this was not a late in life discovery, and I’m tired of pretendingHe wrote the tweet in all of thirty seconds, right there on his phone in bed. And the very first response is a quote retweet from someone with a pride flag in their handle that simply reads,no thanks
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 84
Kudos: 591





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some minor edits throughout. This is basically a rejected black mirror script. I was thinking about how people online would treat Richie if he were a real person, fat jokes and all. Fair warning, it's not pretty. We're aiming for dark realism here. True angst with a happy ending. Please read till the end before offering thoughts. Thank you and enjoy

_I’m gay. I don’t have anything deeper to say at the moment, but this wasn’t a late in life discovery, and I’m tired of pretending_

He wrote the tweet in all of thirty seconds, right there on his phone in bed. He’s drafted out some variation of this tweet many times before, often in the early hours of the morning when his inhibitions were low and the adrenaline rush felt akin to walking along the edge of a cliff. But he always deleted them before bothering to save them to his drafts. He’d hold the backspace button and watch the letters disappear, finding safety in the empty textbox with its blinking cursor.

This time feels different though. This time it doesn’t feel like some digital form of suicide.

He stares at the tweet, trying to edit it, but he can’t think of anything else that needs to be said. He turns to Eddie, who’s sleeping beside him with his arms coiled around a pillow. There’s a thin strip of light falling right across his shoulder blades, and Richie can’t resist running a finger down its path, smiling when Eddie twitches in his sleep.

It’s time. It’s finally time. If he lets this moment go, he’s not sure how long he’ll have to wait before he finds the courage again. All he has to do is push the button. A single tap on his screen, and all the fear he’s been harboring since adolescence will simply vanish. Guarding this secret for so long has caused it to swell to catastrophic proportions. If he lets this go on much longer it’ll continue to balloon until it inevitably pops; until someone else puts the pieces together, and then he’ll have lost his chance.

He smiles as the certainty of this decision settles over him. A warm sense of peace, and excitement. He won’t have to be scared anymore. All the shit the clown held over him will be gone. He can finally cut the last string tying him to Derry. He can finally grow up.

He presses the button and closes his eyes.

He’ll lose followers, that much is guaranteed, but he can’t let it get to him. It’s not like he was planning to stay in the closet until retirement, and if homophobic people want to blow up his mentions, then he supposes that’s something he’ll just have to get used to.

With that in mind, he knows he shouldn’t check his mentions. He used to check them religiously back when Twitter was the new and shiny toy. Sometimes he’d lose hours scrolling through his feed, losing years off his life as he read criticisms that bred complexes all their own: his face, his voice, his teeth, the way he stood, how all his jokes were fucking awful and his personality even worse. Eventually he realized that reading his mentions was directly responsible for the sharp pain radiating over his heart, and searching his own name had a similar effect.

Under normal circumstances his self-control is absolute shit. When it comes to drinking, impulse purchases, and meeting deadlines, his discipline is razor-thin, but he’s been bludgeoned by social media enough times over the past decade that he practically has a Pavlovian response to it. So yeah, checking his mentions is never worth it. No matter what nice things people might be saying, it’s never worth it.

He clicks the bell anyway.

And the very first response is a quote retweet from someone with a pride flag in their handle that simply reads,

_no thanks_

That was the beginning of the end.

Richie should have stopped there. He should have logged off, deleted the app, and maybe frozen his phone in a block of ice for good measure, but instead he lay there as the mentions kept flooding in – hundreds of them, so fast it felt like watching a stock plummet in real time. Sure, there were occasional heart emojis and words of support, but they were far outnumbered by words practically extracted from the darkest and most self-loathsome corners of his psyche.

He anticipated homophobia. Of course he did. His audience is largely comprised of straight white men who have an unhealthy obsession with the word “triggered,” but he’s been steadily trying to weed them out. After leaving Derry and finishing all his contracted shows he put his foot down and demanded a full-stop hiatus, both to recover from their two days in hell and workshop some new material that would hopefully get him back on track.

In the meantime he’s done everything the stupid PR firms tell you to do. He’s been retweeting the right charities, recommending the right movies, and publicly voting for the candidates he always voted for anyway, but kept secret between him and the ballot box. And it’s worked. He’s lost a fair number of followers over the last couple months, but it was easy to dismiss them as bigots and welcome them as casualties. 

So yes, he prepared himself for the worst. In his morbid daydreams he envisioned a million clones of Henry Bowers pounding away at his screen, but to his horror, most of the mentions flooding his timeline are from a different demographic entirely.

_“This wasn’t a late in life discovery” = I knew I was gay the entire time and still made millions off homophobic jokes. Eat shit_

_Richie Tozier has worked with literal sex offenders so forgive me if I proceed to not give a shit_

_That's it I'm gatekeeping_

_I can’t wrap my mind around this. Yes a lot of us are closeted. Yes we all overcompensate out of fear. But becoming a shock jock comedian and catering to the vile views of the very people who want us dead? Being closeted is no excuse_

_Wow Richie Tozier really just woke up and said let me set gay rights back 10 years_

_I 100% agree that Richie Tozier deserves to be called out, but if you talk about him or share any clips please don’t censor his name. Many people, including myself, find him very upsetting and want to keep him muted. Thanks!_

_At least we know why Richie Tozier never apologized for all the homophobic shit he’s said. He felt he didn’t have to because he was “one of us.” Well he’s not! He’s a racist, misogynistic, HOMOPHOBIC person and if he thinks this will earn him any sympathy he can fuck off!_

_Don’t mind me I’m just gonna sit here and sip my tea and happily think about Richie Tozier reading what we all think of his big news_

_DO NOT FOLLOW RICHIE TOZIER. I know there’s a lack of queer comedians but put your efforts towards supporting up-and-comers with genuinely good content. Don’t give your support to someone who’s made a living degrading women for shock value_

_If Richie Tozier wants to call sike I say we give him a pass. Come on dude we won’t be mad. Just say jk and it’ll all be water under the bridge_

_This just reinforces the harmful stereotype that homophobic people are secretly closeted. I hope people are smart enough to realize Richie Tozier is an anomaly, but given the level of critical thinking around here I’m genuinely scared of the effect this will have on all of us_

_Richie Tozier is about to learn a very harsh lesson about the limits of identity politics_

_Since Richie Tozier is neither the representation we want nor deserve I’m going to start a thread of all the awesome queer comedians you should check out in his place. Feel free to add!_

_Let’s not mince words here. Supporting Richie Tozier means supporting bigotry, which has no place in the queer community. Anyone who actively stymies progress is not welcome. Sexuality is irrelevant._

_This is a good reminder that you don't have to love or even like every single member of your identity group. Judging someone based on their character will always be more progressive than judging them based on who they happen to be attracted to_

_I woke up and saw Richie Tozier trending and figured he got arrested or r*ped someone or something, but no, it’s worse_

That’s when Richie makes his screen go dark.

This can’t be real.

The walls are sinking in. His phone feels hot in his palm.

Go back. Take him back. Deleting the tweet is pointless. There’s no backspace, no escape. He always knew coming out would have consequences, but this just isn’t fair. How could he explain this to his teenage self? How could he possibly prepare him for this?

“Eddie,” he whispers desperately, reaching over to shake him awake. "Eddie."

“Yeah, what?” he mumbles, his eyes half-open.

Richie’s skin breaks into a cold sweat at the thought of repeating what he just read. A public record of the thoughts inhabiting the heads of thousands of strangers. Confirmation of the outcome he always feared, played out exactly as his nightmares predicted, but with one cruel and inhumane twist that not even the clown could have prepared him for.

“I fucked up,” is all he can manage.

Eddie quickly confiscates his phone and laptop and changes his Twitter password so he can’t log back in, but he’s forced to give his phone back just ten minutes later when Steve comes on the line. Richie’s sitting on the couch now: shaking, sweating, all the blinds in the house drawn tight.

“Hey, what’s up?” he answers, his voice cracking midway through.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, just peachy,” he replies, anxiously waiting for that dose of Xanax to kick in.

“Okay, I know it’s a lot, but it’s going to be okay. We just have to let the noise die down. Stay home, don’t talk to anyone, don’t answer any emails, and definitely don’t tweet anything else.”

“Yeah, I’m good on all that,” Richie spits back, feeling like a child being scolded.

“Okay, just stay offline and me or Donna will get in touch if we need to. We don’t have to put out a statement or anything, but we’ll have to act fast if we want to figure out where we’re going to take this thing. And I hate to say it, but you’ll probably have to go on a major apology binge because I’ve already seen people digging up your Catholic pedophilia jokes from 2002.”

“You want me to apologize for jokes I made fifteen years ago?”

“Not those ones specifically, but if you want to make any headway with the LGBT crowd then we’ve got to scrap everything and start from scratch, and that’ll probably start with at least one kickass apology. But don’t worry about that right now. We’ll need a lot of coordination and input on something like that, so for now just lie low.”

Black spots spread across Richie’s vision. There’s a sharp buzzing in his ears.

“Okay,” he replies, his fingers growing numb.

Steve lets out a sigh. “Why didn’t you consult me on this? We could’ve put out a statement that already had an apology worked in. You probably should’ve waited till we had the new act out anyway. Now we’re in serious damage control mode.”

Richie feels like he’s back in junior high, pressed against a locker and trying not to cry as Bowers tugs at his hair and asks why he’s such a little sissy.

“Okay,” Richie chokes out, feeling seconds away from vomiting.

“Alright, I’ll get back to you later. Bye.”

The line goes dead.

Richie throws his phone to the other end of the couch and buries his head between his knees. His brain is on fire, his intestines twisting into knots, scalding agony tearing through him. Eddie wraps his arms around his shoulders, and Richie clings to him with as much force as when they escaped from the sewers.

“He didn’t even congratulate me. I mean, I think he already knew, but…” Richie’s voice trails off as he runs out of air.

“I keep telling you he’s an asshole.”

Richie gives a small laugh before shutting his eyes and burying his face in Eddie’s chest.

It must be worse now than it was half an hour ago. When he logged off it was just starting to gain traction as a trending topic, but some online news sites have definitely picked it up by now. It’ll spread to every corner of the internet, every social media site in existence, new ones he’s never heard of and old ones that fell into obscurity a decade ago.

He’s used to getting hate, all comedians are. He’s used to the heckles and the bad reviews and the outrage cycles. He can deal with all that shit. That’s part of the job description. But it took him twenty-eight fucking years to commit to this decision, and everyone loved to keep reminding him that the world was different now, and all the fears he harbored as a teenager were outdated and irrelevant here in the safety of West LA. He was told those archaic fears couldn’t touch him anymore, that he didn’t have to be afraid, that other people like him would look out for him.

What the fuck is he supposed to do now? Issue individual apologies for every obnoxious joke and sarcastic tweet? Would it even matter? It’s not like they’ll forgive him. He’s seen this song and dance before. Even without his phone he can still envision the replies spiraling down in a never-ending scroll as strangers dredge up every bad joke, screenshots of every tweet, clips and quotes, all patch-worked together and distributed like a warning beacon, making sure everyone knows that he’s not welcome. To disregard any apologies, keep the doors shut in his face, and not let him in even if he begs.

It’s true that the people in Derry can’t touch him anymore, but this is so much worse than becoming the town pariah. This is agony. This is worse than the nightmares conjured up by the clown. He finally overcame three decades of self-loathing and managed to fall in love and find happiness for the first time in his goddamn life and he finally told the world who he was and they spit back in his face.

Richie hears his phone vibrate from the other end of the couch. "Fuck, turn it off," he begs, and Eddie obediently reaches over to grab it.

“It’s just Bev," Eddie says, glancing at the screen. "She wants to congratulate you on her Twitter.”

“No, tell her don’t do that.”

“She literally just wants to tweet ‘congratulations.’”

“No, don’t let her. Tell her not to even like the tweet. Pretend she doesn't know me. Same goes for the rest of them. Anyone with over fifty followers, tell them to stay quiet.”

Richie can hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth. Wasn’t this supposed to be the best day of his life? He knows he’s right though; he knows a simple tweet of support isn’t worth the fallout. This is his mess. He doesn’t need to drag anyone else down with him.

Eddie sighs, then nods. “Okay,” he says, then types something in the group chat.

Richie knows he should have been more pragmatic, but he also knows what the statement would have looked like if he’d gone through his management. His coming out unveiling probably would have been padded with phrases along the lines of “ _I’m sorry for any harm I’ve caused the LGBT community through my own insecurity.”_

_“Accepting my sexuality has given me the motivation to grow and change as a person.”_

_“I am entering a new chapter of my life, and I hope to do better.”_

But he didn’t fucking want that. He’s spent his whole fucking life ashamed and disgusted with himself, and he didn’t want his coming out experience to be packed full of self-flagellatory statements detailing what a piece of shit he is. Assuring everyone that he’ll change to make himself worthy. That he was a miserable, disgusting person, and the only way to gain acceptance from his own people was to berate himself into the dirt.

He’s flawed, he knows that. He says stupid shit, he has a fucked-up sense of humor, he’s burned bridges, and hurt people he cares about. He’s worked with shitty people, lied for attention, and degraded himself for the sake of a paycheck many times over. He’s had a drinking problem for over half his life and almost killed himself on more than one occasion. All he wanted was one thing he didn’t have to feel sorry for. Was that too much to ask?

Who is he kidding? It was stupid to think this could have possibly gone any other way. He doesn’t know what will happen next, and honestly, he doesn’t want to. He has no fucking clue how he’s ever going to get up on stage again. What material could he possibly salvage from this? How can he ever open his mouth in public again knowing that the very people he was told would protect him are the ones who jumped at the chance to tear him down?

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Eddie whispers while rubbing his shoulder. “Shit like this always dies down. They’ll find something else to be mad about in a day or two. It’s not real. Whatever happens in that stupid fucking rectangle isn’t real.”

“I know,” Richie chokes out, gripping Eddie tighter.

Eddie’s right, whatever’s happening online isn’t real, but this is. Eddie’s real. Their home is real. And he can afford to hide out here in the real world for a little while longer.


	2. Chapter 2

_It’s very telling that the vast majority of people defending Richie Tozier are straight_

_-That’s because every not-straight person on the planet is terrified you’ll doxx them if they tweet him a motherfucking smiley face!_

_The point in calling Richie Tozier out is not to deprive him of work, but to justifiably criticize him for his past behavior and encourage him to learn from his mistakes. I for one wish him the best and I’m glad to welcome him to the gay community_

_-You just liked a tweet calling him a creep and saying he should drink piss. Your likes are fucking public asshole_

_Let’s be real, Richie Tozier deserved to be cancelled years ago. Everyone just finally woke up_

_-No you saw a vulnerable person divulging a personal secret and woke up to the fact that you’re a fucking psychopath_

_Richie Tozier is one of those celebrities you know has dozens of scandals and NDAs locked under layers of protection. He censors himself but you can see his true nature in his comedy. But hopefully kicking the rock will cause some of the ants to stir_

_-Translation: I hope innocent people suffered and will be forced to publicly broadcast their baggage so I can get my fill of public shaming porn_

_Everyone saying Richie Tozier’s career is over needs to chill. He gets shit on twitter all the time and I promise he doesn’t care_

_-In that case you wouldn’t mind if I spammed you thousands of messages calling you a disgusting shit-stuffed metrics whore since obviously nothing people say around here fucking matters_

_It’s funny how people are like oh poor baby Richie Tozier was only 28 when he said that shit it’s not a big deal. It’s funny how I’m also 28 and somehow manage to avoid publicly mocking marginalized people in exchange for money_

_-You might not be making money at it, but you’re literally publicly mocking a marginalized person right the fuck now_

_Friendly reminder that Richie Tozier isn’t being cancelled. He’s being called out. You can only be cancelled by people who previously supported you, and I can assure you no one who’s upset with him ever supported him_

_-Well I never supported you either so if I call you a repulsive cunt don’t worry it’s just a call out and not a cancellation_

_This is honestly the most fun I've had on twitter in ages! We're really at our best when we can get past all the petty infighting and unite against someone who actually deserves it_

_-What in the fucking hell is wrong with you?_

_Hey remember when Kevin Spacey came out on twitter to distract people from the fact that he sexually assaulted a minor?_

_-Rot in hell_

Eddie’s hands are shaking so hard he can barely type. His thumbs keep sliding, his screen coated in sweat. He managed to hold off on checking Twitter the entire day, even though the morbid curiosity made him feel like an addict trying to resist a plate of cocaine. But no, he had more important shit to do. Instead he spent the day hovering around Richie, distracting him, and trying to comfort him as he poured out his guts and cried. God, Eddie’s seen him cry more in the last twelve hours than the last seven months combined. And Eddie's tried to stay calm throughout it, despite the fact that he can feel the rage clawing at him, twisting him, permanently altering him into an uglier person.

After watching Richie fall asleep Eddie crept into the bathroom and took Richie’s phone with him so he couldn’t check it if he woke up. Then Eddie opened Twitter on his own phone and immediately felt his blood drain and pour out onto the floor. It was a massacre he couldn’t tear his eyes away from. It went on and on without mercy, evoking emotions Eddie didn’t even know could exist, indescribable from anything else, like his phone was pulsing with radiation and seeping into the untouched corners of his brain.

He’s had an anonymous Twitter for years now. Only nineteen followers, no one he knows in real life, and he’s never used the account for anything except lurking, but now he’s getting his fucking money’s worth. With red in his eyes he starts reporting tweets en masse. Anything with a slur is easy: hate speech, nice and simple. From there it gets blurrier, but he checked the terms and conditions, so he dutifully starts reporting anything with violent language, targeted harassment, veiled threats, and Eddie can’t help but get a small hit of satisfaction every time he hits the report button, but it’s not nearly strong enough to counteract the nauseating, skull-fucking experience of wading through so much garbage with full knowledge that he’ll never reach the end.

But it was the tweets that Eddie couldn’t report that infuriated him the most. The ones from people acting like they were entitled to a personal apology from a celebrity they were hardly aware of before twelve hours ago, all over jokes he told while they were still in diapers.

It was all the people expressing concern and sympathy for the fictitious women referenced in Richie’s comedy sets. Those poor women who were clearly not only mistreated, but also manipulated by Richie for the sake of advancing his public image. So far Eddie hasn’t seen a single person stop to consider the possibility that none of those women ever fucking existed.

Eddie also wants to personally rip the balls off every person getting shamelessly hard at the thought of Richie’s announcement serving as the prelude to some deeper scandal, all the while passing off their sick intrigue as simple concern for some poor, abstract victims that Richie clearly has locked in his basement because obviously all celebrities are psychopaths who never make themselves vulnerable without some sinister ulterior motive.

And Eddie swears to fucking god, he’s going to puke his lungs out if he has to read one more tweet following some variation of the brain-rotting hot take that goes, “Calling Richie Tozier a f*ggot is amoral and unacceptable, but calling him worthless trash is our civic duty.”

Eddie has never felt so intimately exposed to humanity’s lack of empathy, and it suddenly hits him how twisted and fucked up celebrity culture has become, or maybe always has been.

“In exchange for providing us with entertainment, you’ve given us permission to treat you like the scum of the earth, and if you have a problem with that, then get the fuck out.”

And for his entire life Eddie simply accepted that, but now he feels queasy with guilt because he’s seen this exact scenario play out beat for beat many times before, both before social media and after, but within the last couple years the uptick has become impossible to ignore. He saw the hashtags and the feuds, the viral outrage and the cancellation campaigns, but he never cared enough to bother digging into the details of some celebrity gossip he didn’t give a shit about, so he just skimmed the bullet points and more or less took everyone’s word for it. And even if the controversy seemed ridiculous and manufactured, it’s not like it mattered. It’s not like celebrities cared. They were millionaires wanting for nothing, so why would they give a shit about some stupid cyberbullying?

God, Eddie used to hate that word. “Cyberbullying” in and of itself always seemed like an oxymoron. As someone who was actually bullied; someone who was hit, stalked, and called the nastiest shit right to his face, cyberbullying seemed like some third-rate softball hazing, equivalent to slipping a mean note in someone’s locker. And he was always tempted to tell people complaining about it to get offline and get a grip. Because what happened online wasn’t real, and it couldn’t hurt you.

But Eddie doesn’t believe that anymore. He can’t. Not as he’s watching tens of thousands of people foaming at the mouth, some maybe only a hair-trigger away from taking their rage beyond the world of social media. And as Eddie sinks further down the timeline he grows increasingly terrified that he’ll see Richie’s address, or threats that extend beyond vague hyperbole. He’s already seen the lazily censored words d*e and k*ll at least a hundred times now, and he’s only one more instance away from waking Richie up and telling him they need to get the fuck out of here, drive to another city, find a hotel, all his instincts telling him to run.

In the breaks between reporting and rage replying, Eddie begins the process of scrubbing all trace of himself from the internet. Untagging himself from five-year-old Facebook photos, changing the email link on all his media accounts to a burner, and even impulsively sending an email to his boss asking for his name and contact information to be removed from the company website. Salt the earth, disappear.

What really makes Eddie fucking livid is he’s pretty sure 98% of the people voicing their outrage haven’t watched any of Richie’s comedy, apart from the out-of-context thirty-second clips getting passed around. Eddie saw a thread with 10,000 retweets listing Richie’s top ten most controversial jokes, assembled in record speed from who the fuck knows where, now plastered on display as photographic evidence of his irredeemability.

And honestly, they’re not even that bad. Admittedly Eddie’s biased since they're hardly any edgier than the bits they toss around in day to day conversation, and the worst of Richie’s material is still much less offensive than all the shit they threw around as kids. Back then calling other kids sluts and retards was just a normal part of their vocabulary, and no one ever told them to cut it out. Hell, the jokes Richie told about his mom were far worse than any of the fat jokes currently circulating online, but obviously Eddie knows the argument of “he’s better now than he was as a literal child” won’t hold much water.

But god, it’s all just so fucking stupid. A joke from 2007 about rap music made him racist. A deleted tweet from 2011 about parking in a handicap spot made him ableist. A skit from 2009 where he wore a wig made him transphobic, then there were the abortion jokes, the hooker jokes, the jokes that used the words psycho, manic, and schizophrenic, the jokes that followed national tragedies and the ones written for roasts that were designed to be viciously nasty by nature, all transcribed like evidence in a legal case and presented to the court of public opinion for trial by ratio.

Then there are the gay jokes that people won’t shut up about, which to Eddie’s surprise are actually far tamer than he expected. Given how much people have been crying about them Eddie figured there had to be some secret slur-filled bootleg circulating on the deep web or something. But no, the jokes were all pretty innocuous. A lot of them revolved around some element of self-deprecation, the punchline often falling in the realm of “I’m so messed up even a guy wouldn’t fuck me,” and Eddie can’t help but wonder how much of that formula was subconscious.

What infuriates Eddie the most is that the vast majority of shit they’re digging up is at least three years old, and the truly controversial stuff was filmed well over a decade ago. According to Richie his material was even worse back when he first started out back in the late 90s, but thankfully nobody was archiving shit back then, or at least he fucking hopes not. And nobody can deny that Richie’s comedy and social media presence have grown significantly less provocative over the years, but of course it's impossible for anyone to believe that Richie simply changed with the times along with everyone else. No, his more palatable presence was clearly proof that his views and values stagnated at the age of twenty, and now he's merely hiding his true nature in order to manipulate the public for the sake of ticket sales. Yes, that's the only plausible explanation.

To add to the rest of this bullshit, Richie already issued apologies for most of this shit years ago. Richie’s not tone deaf; he knows where the line is and when he crosses it. When something that sounds fine in his head makes him cringe once it’s out in the open. And he’s not an amateur at all this; he knows that making apologies is a normal part of every comedian’s career, and clinging to your dignity in show business won’t make you any friends. But in this case it’s obvious that people don’t want an apology for anything he said; they want him to apologize simply because they hate him.

And hate is not an exaggeration. They hate him. They hate him like they were born into it.

The only consolation is that if anyone goes digging for actual dirt on Richie they won’t find anything. People have been getting mad about jokes for as long as comedy has existed, but in terms of actual offenses, Richie’s record is clean. Sure, he got in trouble a few times in his twenties. He trespassed, dabbled in hard drugs, and shoplifted when things got really rough, but nothing that the Twitter mob could get all high and mighty over. No assaults, no hate crimes, no partners he abused, nothing that would merit actual annexation from the industry, much less criminal charges.

Well, yes, he did technically kill Bowers. That did indeed happen. But fortunately it seems like the town swallowed up all recollection of his presence the same way it buried the house on Niebolt and all those missing children. But even if someone manages to break through the town’s magic bullshit and find Bowers’ corpse, any evidence of Richie’s involvement will be long gone.

No, out here in the real world, Richie is safe. If they hack him they won’t find a secret alt-right 4chan account. They won’t find child pornography or shady bank statements. Just his extensive library of movie torrents, which Eddie will probably ask him to delete for his own peace of mind.

But Richie does have secrets, Eddie knows that much. Richie has told him relatively little about his life in the twenty-two-year gap between leaving and returning to Derry. Sure, Eddie can read about his career on Wikipedia, but obviously there’s much more buried beneath the public record. Things that Richie will sometimes reveal in fragments in the middle of unrelated conversations. Details that will leave Eddie gutted, curious for more, but unwilling to ask.

Back in high school Richie seemed to acquire alcohol out of thin air. Derry was way too small to get away with using a fake ID, and there’s no way Richie shoplifted as much as he drank, yet somehow his supply never seemed to run dry.

Richie never showed up on the morning of the SAT, and later that night around 1:00 a.m. Eddie received a slurred and disjointed call from a payphone. After several minutes of trying to parse Richie out, Eddie surmised that he was stranded in Bangor after missing the last bus back to Derry. So like any good friend, Eddie stole his mom’s keys and drove to pick him up.

He found Richie clutching his backpack on a bench outside a convenience store, either drunk, high, or both. Eddie still remembers him stumbling into the backseat, lying down on his side, and proudly announcing that he wasn’t a virgin anymore.

Eddie remembers being far too unsettled to ask any questions, and Richie passed out maybe a minute later, so the drive back to Derry was silent as Eddie navigated the road as cautiously as possible, trying to ignore the sound of clinking bottles in Richie’s backpack.

And things didn’t get any better after graduation. It took three months of friendship plus an additional three months of dating before Richie finally revealed that after moving to Chicago at eighteen he started living with a guy twice his age, and while he insisted it was voluntary, he also acknowledged that he didn’t really have the money to leave.

The relationship ended on bad terms. Very bad terms. Eddie doesn’t know the details, but when the man died of cancer just six years later, Richie said he only felt relief.

Eddie knows there was a suicide attempt at some point in his twenties. There were also periods of homelessness, some really shitty people, and a lot of straight up bad luck. So yes, Richie does have secrets – ones he’s protective of. And if things progress much farther, it’s inevitable that some of them will begin to leak out.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door.

“Eds, you in there?”

Eddie finally glances up from his phone, the stark contrast of the three-dimensional world making his vision shift in layers for a few seconds before flattening out. With a grunt he pushes himself off the floor, feeling like he just aged a decade in an hour, wondering if he’ll see any new grey hairs when he walks past the mirror.

He opens the door and immediately wraps his arms around Richie’s waist and presses his forehead against his shoulder, and in return Richie raises a hand to cradle the back of his head.

“Hey, you want to find a hotel?” Eddie asks impulsively. His eyes are burning; he needs to fucking sleep, but he can't – not here.

“What happened?” Richie asks, quiet fear in his voice.

“No, nothing happened. I’d just feel better somewhere else.”

There haven’t been any death threats yet. No direct ones at least. Just thousands of people saying they wouldn’t mind in the slightest if the universe took care of it for them.

“I can call Bill and ask if we can stay at his place,” Richie suggests.

“Yeah, good plan.” Eddie nods against his shoulder.

Eddie ends up being the one to make the call as Richie starts packing. Bill’s tired, but understanding, and says he’ll leave the garage unlocked. Then Eddie pulls some clothes out of their shared dresser and stuffs them in his own bag, his mind still pulsing with everything he just absorbed. He wonders how long it’ll take for his brain to return to its normal state.

“One day I’ll ask you what people are saying about me,” Richie says while lacing up his shoes by the front door.

Eddie looks down at his own feet, feeling sick at the thought of repeating any of the words seared into his memory.

“I still won’t tell you,” he replies firmly. If Richie wants to know he can look for himself, but Eddie will never be the one to hurt him like that.

Richie smiles. “You really love me, don’t you?”

“More than anything.”

“Twitter didn’t convince you I’m an alt-right wife-beating sociopath?”

“Twitter convinced me you’re the best fucking person I know.”

Richie laughs. “Everyone you know works in insurance.”

“Shut up.”


	3. Chapter 3

Richie pokes at the scrambled eggs on his plate, overcooked and over-salted, just hard mounds of rubbery yolk that he can’t even finish out of politeness. Eddie’s sitting across from him and Bill’s on his left, all three eating their breakfast in silence, their brief bouts of dialogue absent any mention of the swarm of online outrage floating somewhere in the thermosphere, bouncing between satellites. Richie’s throat is still sore from crying. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin feels sick with sweat, despite the fact that he showered less than half an hour ago.

All in all, being out isn’t exactly living up to his mildest expectations.

“So this is life outside the closet, huh? Not gonna lie, it kind of sucks ass.”

He skewers a lump of egg and brings it up to his mouth, trying not to cringe as he chews and immediately washes it down with a gulp of coffee.

Bill looks up from his own plate. His hair has gotten grayer in the seven months since Derry, and his vision worse based on the glasses that now rarely leave his face. “I’m definitely just a casual observer in all this, but getting cancelled over coming out does sound like the premise of some neo-Kafka New Yorker story.”

“Yeah, feels that way too. I just can’t believe how stupid I was. I mean, I wrote for fucking _South Park_. What the hell did I expect?”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me, you got a congratulation text from the production team,” Eddie remarks before taking a sip of orange juice.

Richie processes that statement, then lets out a short laugh. “Cool. Funny how that’s one of the few things in this whole clusterfuck I’m actually _not_ surprised by.”

Just then Richie hears a whiny meow from underneath his chair, and looking down, he sees Bill’s orange tabby Kismet rubbing her face against the leg of the table.

“What’s up, kid?” Richie says while reaching down to scratch between her ears, smiling as she nuzzles into his hand and closes her eyes.

“So what’s the plan?” Bill asks. “I mean, practically what can you actually do?”

Richie reaches down to lift the cat into his lap.

“For one, I’m not issuing a fucking apology. If I put out an apology Twitter’s just going to tear it to shreds and probably meme it for good measure.”

“They’re just mad because they have to share a census box with you,” Eddie remarks bitterly before taking a bite of his oatmeal, his casual movements almost violent.

“Yeah, none of them seemed to notice me all that much before I tried sitting at their lunch table.”

“Hey, at least none of the people yelling at you were following you in the first place. You actually gained like twenty thousand followers yesterday.”

“Oh yeah? Wonder how many signed on just to watch the clown in the rainbow wig dig his own grave.”

Less than a second after finishing that sentence, a loud sneeze tears through him, causing the cat to bristle and sprint from his lap with an offended yelp. He tries to catch her in midair, but she slips through his fingers and darts around the corner. Damn, it’ll take forever to convince her to come back. But at least he can throw out his eggs on the valid excuse that they’re now covered in a fine layer of orange fur.

God, Richie feels like he could break every dish at this table. He could punch through the drywall and the foundation too for good measure. If yesterday felt like suffocating, today he’s boiling. He thought he managed to cycle through all five stages of grief in a single day, but apparently he’s just getting started. But the anger isn’t a one-way street; a sizable chunk is directed back at himself for being stupid enough to put his trust in a million invisible strangers while ignoring every cautionary tale that came before him. What the fuck did he expect? An outpouring of love and support? Yes, that’s exactly what he expected. How could he be so fucking stupid?

Bill shifts in his seat, maybe sensing the mounting frustration emanating from both sides of the table. “For what it’s worth, Twitter isn’t the whole world," he offers neutrally.

Richie sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s probably a lot of shit going down on MySpace and GeoCities too. But yeah, I know what you mean. But still, even if it’s just fifty thousand people churning out most of it that’s still five times the population of Derry calling me a piece of shit. And yeah, I’ve been through shit like this before, but I didn’t think coming out would get me the worst press of my life. No wait, scratch that, I 100% expected things to go to shit on roughly this scale, but I didn’t think the call would be coming from inside the house.”

Richie’s still reeling from the absurdity of it all, and he hates how unsurprised he is in retrospect. He’s toyed with the idea of coming out many times before, but up until recently it simply wasn’t an option. Even during the aughts it wasn’t uncommon to see talented comedians drift off the face of the earth simply because they were less equipped at passing than he was. But as the years went on attitudes steadily began to shift. The boutique comics of Greenwich Village and Boystown began rising through the ranks. New comedians were entering the scene already well out of the closet and cultivating acts that Richie would be terrified to perform even under the most liberal of circumstances. And while Richie knew he could never tailor himself to the avant garde nature of the alt-comedy scene, he also knew that mainstream acceptance was no longer a fever dream.

At least now he feels vindicated in the knowledge that his fears were not entirely irrational. For years he truly believed that his only obstacle to a perfect life was his own stupid cowardice, but at least now he can put to bed any regrets over not coming out sooner. Or maybe he should have timed it better. 2012-2015, that was the sweet spot. He missed his window. Fucking idiot.

He knocks back the last of his coffee, grimacing as some of the sludge on the bottom reaches his tongue. He ate hardly anything yesterday apart from some toast and cereal, but his appetite is still completely shot. His mouth feels dry, and fuck, he can’t remember ever wanting a drink this bad. He’s not sure if Bill intentionally moved all the alcohol in the house out of sight, but he hates that his eyes are involuntarily searching for it. At this point he’ll do shots of fucking ethanol. Maybe things will start making sense again once he gets rid of this fucking sobriety.

When shit like this happens the thing he hates most is the fucking gossip. It wasn’t so bad back when he first started getting popular. Back then the chatter was simple and predictable: he was ugly, untalented, uninspired, the usual, the harmless shit. But what he can’t stand are the fucking rumors. How the smallest perceived slight will be extrapolated into a cataclysmic offense. A game of telephone stretching to hell and back.

It was the same in junior high and high school, back when people would make up the weirdest fucking rumors about him and convey their disgust through knowing glances and turned shoulders. But in those days he usually had to beg the other Losers for intel to make sure he wasn’t in serious trouble. Because if the other kids wanted to make up some shit about how he had a colostomy bag that was one thing, but if they were gossiping about how frequently he caught himself staring at Eddie’s hands in study hall that was another matter entirely.

He sighs and scrubs his hands down his unshaven face. “Eds, I know you were lurking last night.”

He watches Eddie’s face freeze. His gaze flickers down to his empty bowl, pointedly avoiding eye contact.

When Eddie came out of the bathroom last night he looked like an extra from some Oscar bait war movie. His movements seemed over-coordinated, his sentences confused, as if he’d just woken up from a very deep sleep. Richie knows the feeling, and he wonders how long it’ll take before he can go a single minute without remembering how many strangers viscerally despise him.

“I don’t need a full autopsy,” Richie continues. “I just need to know if people are lying.”

From the look on Eddie’s face, Richie already knows the answer.

“People are always lying. It’s just a matter of who believes them.”

“That’s the thing though,” Richie almost yells, raising a hand for emphasis. “When shit like this happens people will believe literally every person on planet earth _except_ for you. A bot with three followers and an anime icon could claim I fucked their wife and everyone would conveniently forget I’m gay.”

Bill snorts into his coffee, bending forward as he tries to swallow through his laugh.

“You should put that in your act,” he says while wiping a sleeve across his mouth.

“Sure, I’ll add it to the roster. But seriously, Eds, did you see anyone straight up making shit up? Like serious shit?”

“Fuck, dude, don’t make me remember that shit,” Eddie groans while rubbing a hand over his eyes, as if he were trying to massage out a migraine. “Um… yeah, lots of friend of a friend stuff. Someone said you gave them “weird vibes” at a party. But no, nothing serious. If anything serious did come up Steve would’ve called, which he hasn’t. You’re good. And it’s been a full day. If someone wanted to call you out for being an axe murderer they would’ve done it by now.”

“I am an axe murderer.”

“Yeah, I know. That was the joke.”

Now that does manage to make Richie smile.

Just then a thought hits him across the back of the skull: a missing variable he stupidly forgot to take into account before pulling the trigger.

“What about Myra?” he asks. 

A pause.

“What about her?” Eddie asks in return, thrown off by the sudden segue. 

“Any chance she might sell us out? Expose me as the filthy home-wrecking husband-stealing whore that I am?”

“Dude, Myra’s too embarrassed to even tell her sister what happened. Trust me, she has a strong investment in keeping herself out of the picture.”

Right, Eddie definitely mentioned that early on, and now Richie feels stupid for asking. Out here it’s easy to forget that most people in the real world care more about privacy than petty vengeance. Richie’s definitely in that camp too, but in an industry that runs on competitive screen time and Twitter drama it’s hard to conceptualize a society where most people simply don’t want to be seen. They want to go about their lives anonymously, maybe earning casual recognition for their achievements or mini dopamine hits on a selfie, but the perpetual race for relevancy that characterizes Richie’s world isn’t exactly the norm and standard, even if he sees it reinforced everywhere he turns. 

“I know,” he sighs. “I’m just so fucking paranoid. I mean, I’ve got a lot of cringy shit in my past, but not much that could get me in actual trouble. Sure, I have a bunch of old hookups who could describe my dick if they want their $50 TMZ piece. And I know a bunch of people who dislike me for petty shit, but I just know that if people start lying no one will fucking believe me. I mean, would you guys believe me?”

“I would,” Bill says with a shrug. “People make up shit about me online all the time.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, I keep forgetting the internet hates you too.”

Richie didn’t intend for his words to come out so harsh, but he can instantly read the sting in Bill’s expression.

“As I’ve been told.”

“And how do you deal with it?” Richie asks in a gentler tone, genuinely curious. 

Bill examines his coffee with a contemplative air, an almost uncanny impression of their tenth grade English teacher. 

“I feel like an asshole for saying this, but it doesn’t really affect me much. Professionally at least. Emotionally it feels like having a rusty sword shoved up my ass.”

“But every time you drop a new book I feel like I have to scroll past a dozen thinkpieces arguing why you’re personally responsible for every problematic and sexy trope in all of English lit. That doesn’t ding your sales at all?”

Bill shrugs. “I mean, the people reading those thinkpieces aren’t the ones buying my books anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what they think. It sucks in the sense that being hated by strangers isn’t the nicest of feelings, but really the only thing that impacts my sales is whether my books are good or not. If I wanted to start writing stuff for feminist lit classes, then yeah, I might have a rough time breaking into the market. But that’s not my audience, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Right, an audience, I used to have one of those. Everyone told me to chase after that pink money and look where it got me.”

Eddie gives his shin a nudge beneath the table.

“You know, just because you’re into guys it doesn’t mean you have to rebrand yourself as some Tumblr-approved golden boy. In fact, strategically I think that’s about the worst thing you could do.”

“So what’s my business model then? I need demographics here.”

“Honestly," Bill starts, "I think you’re beyond the point where you need to worry about demographics. Back when I was working on my first book my publisher made me gut my manuscript over and over again and wouldn’t shut up about targeting the beach and airplane crowd. But now they let me write whatever I want, and some people like it and a lot of people don’t, but I’m just writing the stuff I want to read. So I guess the question is what kind of comedy do you like? If you perform stuff you think is funny you’ll find an audience that thinks the same.”

“Shit, where were you for sophomore career day?”

“Over by the electrician’s booth getting lectured on why I should go to trade school instead of becoming a writer.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that. Guess you got the last laugh on that one.”

Richie leans back and crosses his arms, turning over Bill’s advice.

Fuck, performing stuff he thinks is funny. What a novel concept that’d be. It’s not exactly a wild suggestion. He was writing all his own material up until three years ago, which is around the time when the depression and the loneliness and the alcohol drove him into a state that felt like being perpetually stuck on his sixth day of not showering. But even as an amateur he never exactly prided himself on his authenticity. Comedy was his job, not his hobby. He was malleable, a whore like any other. If a joke fell flat it was cut from the act, regardless of how much he liked it. But Bill’s right; he’s definitely at a point now where he doesn’t have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The only problem is he’s become so desensitized to the comedy scene that he honestly can’t remember what stands out to him anymore.

Then his eyes shift across the table, where Eddie is staring at him with that neutral frown that amplifies the wrinkles in his forehead. But for some reason, his expression makes Richie think of all the times he’s seen Eddie smile over the last four months. Gentle, content smiles and maniacal ones alike. Angry ones when Richie tells a really terrible pun, polite ones he puts on in public, and fake ones he uses just to put himself at ease. Each one hits Richie with a wave of nostalgia, reminding him of a time when making Eddie smile was a game he always played to win. He tried to make the others laugh too, but Eddie was always his primary audience. The singular demographic that seemed to linger in his subconscious even as his memories faded.

“Honestly, this’ll sound so fucking corny, but my favorite jokes are the ones that make Eddie laugh." He looks at him, telegraphing his earnestness. "I’ve been trying to make you laugh as long as I can remember, so if I can keep doing that then I think I’m good.”

Eddie almost looks offended by his sincerity.

“You’re going to get so fucking cancelled. My sense of humor’s more fucked up than yours.”

“You started losing your shit the other night over the phrase gluten-free tomatoes.”

“It was in the delivery, okay,” Eddie retaliates with a trademark chop of his hand, and Richie can’t help but giggle under his breath.

Sadly, the moment’s interrupted by a ping from Bill’s phone.

“Shit,” he mutters, pulling it from his pocket. “I have to go.”

Richie glances up at the clock on the stove. Bill did mention needing to head out by 9:00, and it’s already 9:13.

“Will you guys be here all day?” Bill asks while reaching for his messenger bag.

Richie shrugs. “That’s the plan. Unless they want to haul me out to the stocks for another gluten-free tomato pelting.”

Richie catches Eddie lowering his head, obviously trying to hide the smile pulling at his mouth, refusing to give Richie the satisfaction. 

“Cool. Me and Audra should be home by 7:00. The garage button is the big one under the intercom if Steve wants to park his car.”

“Thanks. Have fun fetishizing murder or whatever you get paid for.”

“Thanks. Have fun trying to get gay people to like you.”

“Never been my strong suit.”

Bill walks out of the kitchen with a final wave over his shoulder, and Kismet suddenly materializes out of nowhere to follow behind him with a cute little trot.

Richie examines the brown sludge sitting at the bottom of his mug, rotating it side to side as though he could read his future in the stray grounds. 

Eddie rubs a foot up along his shin and Richie presses into it, remembering how he used to fantasize about this in the school cafeteria. How he treasured all the occasions when Eddie’s foot would accidentally brush his own beneath the table, and sometimes linger a second too long before pulling away. He asked Eddie about it a couple months ago, and his suspicions were confirmed: the prolonged touches were not entirely accidental.

For a brief second Richie imagines trying to slog through all this without Eddie by his side. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that if Eddie weren’t here right now, then Richie might not have survived until morning. That’s a really dark fucking thought, but it’s the truth. 

Thankfully today feels better than yesterday. The worst has probably passed. The hard part’s over, and now it’s just a matter of clean up. Getting back on track will be a bitch and a half, but as long as Eddie’s here, it shouldn’t be so bad.

“Hey, Eds?”

“Yeah?”

“You know I was raped, right?”


	4. Chapter 4

Eddie can’t figure out what he’s supposed to be doing with his face. What emotions he’s supposed to be expressing. He’s suddenly hit with a flashback of getting put in timeout in second grade, and the teacher asking him to describe his emotions, and he remembers kicking and stomping his feet in frustration because he didn’t want to fucking psychoanalyze himself; he just wanted the other kids to stop touching his pencils.

What emotion is he feeling right now? What’s the socially acceptable way to react? What does Richie want him to say?

“No, I didn’t know that,” he replies. It’s technically the truth, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t suspect it. How it always felt like a missing piece in Richie’s backstory, something expressed in the silence. Eddie hates to say he’s not surprised, but obviously he was hoping his suspicions were wrong.

“Yeah, a couple times by that guy I was living with in Chicago. And again a few years later by someone else.”

Eddie tries to think of a response, but comes up blank. Richie’s tone is casual, but Eddie’s not sure if it’d be appropriate to mirror him. He can honestly say he’s never been in a position like this before, as he was never exactly the type of friend who people ran to for advice or consolation.

“Did you report any of them?” he asks, and immediately regrets it. Isn’t that one of the things you’re not supposed to ask? Or not initially at least. Eddie could swear he’s seen rules for these types of conversations, but trying to recall them on the fly feels like trying to dig up mnemonic devices for an age-old algebra test. God, he hates that he’s dedicating more energy to parsing out his own responses instead of just reacting like a normal person. What the fuck is wrong with him?

“Nope. Didn’t even think of it,” Richie answers, his casual smile refusing to falter.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says on impulse, even though he knows it’s a completely useless thing to say. Sorry won’t solve anything. It won’t make anything better. He’s quickly learning that the English language really isn’t equipped for adequately expressing sympathy in these situations.

“It was fucking ages ago,” Richie says with a shrug. “But I was thinking, if things get any worse, that might be a card to keep in my back pocket. I could do one of those grayscale tragic backstory sympathy porn articles. Play the victim, make everyone feel sorry for me.”

Eddie shudders, the image of the magazine cover flashing in his mind’s eye. The lighting, the camera angles, the quote boxes, he can see it all, and it makes him want to crawl inside a hole.

“I don’t think it counts as playing the victim if you were actually a victim.”

He looks to Richie for a reaction, but to his surprise, he just lets out a short laugh before tapping the base of his empty mug against the table.

“Do you think it’d work though?”

'No,' Eddie wants to beg. 'Please don’t.'

“I think if it took you seven months just to tell me that much then you’re probably not dying to tell Newsweek all about it.”

“I’d go classier than Newsweek. I was thinking the Atlantic.”

Eddie looks down at the table, trying to pick apart his own thoughts and figure out how to voice them. Sure, there are definitely worse routes at their disposal, but Eddie doesn’t even want to think about all potential outcomes to a move like that. Maybe it would work in the short-term, but who knows how the strings could get twisted later down the line.

“You should do whatever you think is best. But I think that plan has the potential to backfire in a lot of really fucked up ways.”

He looks up at Richie, silently pleading with him not to put himself through that. Fortunately, Richie seems to read him well enough.

“Yeah, you’re right," he says casually, as if they were discussing the best route to avoid traffic. "I wasn’t seriously considering it. But sometimes it feels like people will only see you as either a victim or a bigot, and which would you rather be?”

“People will see you as whatever they want to see.”

“Yeah, I know, but-”

He’s cut off by the sound of the doorbell: two loud chimes that resound throughout the ground floor.

It’s probably Steve. Fuck, is the conversation just going to end like this? Apparently so, because Richie’s already standing up and walking in the direction of the front door. Eddie follows after him, silently cursing himself for handling that so poorly. He’s not exactly sure what he should have said instead, but he could have done a hell of a lot better. When he’s put in positions like that his default response is usually something along the lines of “damn, that sucks,” but he figured that wasn't going to cut it here.

He’ll think of something to say later. In the meantime, he follows Richie to the front door, preparing himself for a slap in the face from the outside world.

Richie checks the intercom before unlocking the door, then he scoops up Kismet so she can’t dart out the second he opens it.

Steve’s standing on the doorstep, dressed in jeans and a blazer and holding a tupperware container in his right hand and a laptop bag in his left.

“Hey, glad you made it. Welcome to my secret bunker.” Richie steps aside to let him pass through.

“Thanks for having me. How you holding up?”

Richie shuts the door and lets the cat leap to the ground.

“Eh, in hindsight not my worst day.”

“Good. First off, sorry I was such a dick on the phone yesterday. I was stressed, I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time. As a token, muffins, courtesy of David.”

Steve extends the container like an olive branch. Richie stares at it, considering it skeptically.

“You made your husband bake me your own damn apology muffins?”

“He also threatened to call and apologize on my behalf, but I managed to convince him I’d do it in person. So yeah, sorry for being so insensitive, you didn’t do anything wrong, congratulations.”

Richie toys with him a second longer, then reaches forward to take the box.

“Accepted. Just wait until you have to mop up the backlash after people find out I don’t bring my own bags to the grocery store.”

“You better swear to take that shit to your fucking grave.”

Richie smiles before turning to Eddie, who’s standing about ten feet away with his arms awkwardly crossed.

“Steve, you’ve met Eddie, right? That almost legally-divorced childhood friend who’s been living with me the last couple months? The one who bought me a new mattress and switched out my water filter?”

“Hey.” Eddie raises a hand in greeting.

“Hey.” Steve returns the gesture, then turns back to Richie. “You want to hear something hilarious? Donna was convinced you guys were just really good friends.”

“Damn, that’s hysterical. Why isn’t she writing my act? By the way, where is Donna?”

“Scanning your emails for death threats.”

“Shit, I better send her a fruit basket or something. Anyway, guess we should get started.” Richie turns in the direction of the living room and waves for both of them to follow.

Eddie’s not exactly sure what to make of him. He definitely isn’t giving off the air of someone who just divulged the most traumatic secret of their life. Or maybe he’s acting perfectly normal; Eddie has no frame of reference. The last time it happened was probably at least fifteen years ago. That’s plenty of time to adjust and make peace with it. It’s not like he’s obligated to break down in tears every time he mentions it just to prove how devastating it was.

Eddie wonders how many people he’s told. There must be others. Or at least he fucking hopes.

Richie places the box of muffins on the coffee table and immediately pulls one out, giving it a large bite and cupping his hand to catch the crumbs. Eddie noticed he didn’t finish his breakfast, but he suspects that had more to do with Bill’s cooking than anything else.

“You remember Chris Mondragon?” Steve asks after sitting down and pulling a faux leather binder from his bag. “Kid with the hair gel and wire rim glasses down at Media Landscaping?”

“I think we met in passing.”

“Well, you’re going to be paying his therapy bills for the rest of his life after what we put him through yesterday. I think he started crying blood at one point.”

Steve opens the binder to reveal some papers and a legal pad, the top page decked out with some bullet points and assorted scribbles.

“Anyway, here’s the breakdown: everything’s fine. You lost some followers but gained a lot more, and virtually no one with any actual influence went after you. On the right it was all the normal homophobic troll shit and on the left it was almost entirely unverified accounts with under five thousand followers, predominantly anon and pseudonymous accounts that stick in tight circles and all follow each other, so the outcry wasn’t as widespread as it initially seemed. So, with all that in mind, I think we should scrap the apology idea.”

“Oh yeah? Too bad. When I was a kid I thought apologizing after coming out was just polite.”

Steve immediately lowers his eyes and Eddie can’t help but flinch. It’s a sharp jab, but honestly, Steve deserves it after all the shit he said on the phone yesterday.

“Yeah, sorry about jumping straight into the apology angle. In hindsight that was really fucked up. That’s just automatically where my brain goes whenever I see your name trending. Even for good shit.”

“When the fuck have I ever trended for good shit?”

Steve pauses, thinking, finds nothing.

“Fair point. But I have to give you credit, the fact that people in the industry really like you makes my job a hell of a lot easier.”

“Wait, people like him?” Eddie interjects.

“Fuck you, I’m extremely likable. It’s my small-town charm.”

Steve nods. “Yeah, your stage persona is one thing, but where it counts people around here don’t have a lot of bad things to say about you. Which definitely pays off when shit like this happens and you don’t want random c-listers subtweeting you because you pissed in their pool. Okay, so that’s all the good news. The bad news is, um… how do I phrase this delicately?”

Steve hums into his hand while tapping his pen against the notepad, prompting Eddie to crane his neck to see what the hell could possibly be written on that paper.

Finally, Steve takes a breath and continues. “So basically Fox News ran a story in support of you this morning and now all of conservative media is trying to make you their poster boy for oppressed white comedians.”

The room goes quiet as Richie and Eddie absorb that sucker punch of a sentence. They glance at each other, mutually trying to figure out what to do with that information. The silence stretches on a few more seconds until Eddie can’t help himself anymore. He starts laughing.

“Shit, you’re fucking kidding me!” Richie exclaims, smiling manically.

“Wish I was," Steve sighs. "It looked like things were finally winding down last night, but now you’re back in the spotlight.”

Richie flings himself against the backrest of the couch and rubs a hand beneath his glasses.

“I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised. Gay people attacking another gay person over telling gay jokes? I’m sure 4chan is creaming their popcorn watching all this.”

Objectively Eddie recognizes that this disturbing new twist makes their situation a lot more complicated, but god, it’s just so fucking funny. Last night Richie was sobbing against his chest about how he might never be able to do standup again, but hell, he could easily dedicate an entire hour to this whole shitshow and sell out Madison Square Garden.

On the flip side, Steve seems far less amused than either of them.

“Yeah, yesterday I was thinking maybe we could spin this to our benefit. Do a piece on all the awful shit you got and garner some sympathy. But obviously that idea’s shot since if you take the defensive stance the right will cheer you on, which will just make the left hate you even more.”

“Eh, that would’ve happened anyway, so no loss there,” Richie says with a shrug before finishing his muffin with one large bite.

“Well if you’ve got any bright ideas let me know. The other plan was to not say anything and just let this blow over, but that only works if no one’s expecting you to pick a side.”

Richie lets out a groan and runs a hand through his hair. “See, this is why comedy fucking sucks. Anytime you tell a shitty joke half the audience is screaming at you to apologize, the other half is calling them fascists, and meanwhile you’re just stuck on stage trying to power through the hangover.”

“Well, we’ve got to make a move soon. Because as things are now we’ve got a thousand basement podcasters in bad button ups releasing their rants on cancel culture and all of blue wave Twitter is reading your silence as endorsement. And it goes without saying that your comment sections are a fucking bloodbath.”

Eddie’s enjoying the game of conversational ping pong being played out in front of him, but then out of nowhere an idea hits him, and it’s not even a bad one.

“Hey, I’ve got no qualifications in this field, so feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up, but doesn’t this give you the perfect out?”

Richie and Steve look at him quizzically.

“I mean, couldn’t you just tweet ‘fuck Fox News’ and donate some money to Planned Parenthood and you’ll be uncancelled like that?” He punctuates his sentence with a snap of his fingers. “The right can go into a tailspin and give you a lot of free publicity, the left gets to brag about winning over a celebrity they didn’t give a shit about until yesterday, and some charity gets a chunk of change. Win win win.”

Eddie has to admit he’s proud of himself for that one, and based on their expressions, they don’t seem to think it’s entirely stupid either.

“Okay, I’m actually with you there.” Richie nods.

“Yeah, you know the people yelling at you don’t actually want an apology; they want blood in the water. The way I see it, the only way to get on their good side is to speak their language and attack someone they hate even more.”

Eddie might be enjoying this way more than would be considered healthy, but he can’t help himself. It’s like a game of high stakes battleships. Outmaneuver the enemy, predict their response, plan seven steps ahead, it’s psychological warfare, and Eddie has a personal investment in winning.

“Okay, yeah, I’m into this,” Richie says with a mischievous smirk. “Except I don’t want to endear myself too hard. One minute I attack Fox News, next some teenager is making me their phone background.”

“You can shatter their hopes and dreams later down the line,” Steve interjects, “but ideally we want to get the right off your back right fucking now. And honestly, this seems like a pretty decent strategy.”

Wow, Eddie never thought his social media revenge fantasy would be endorsed by a professional talent manager, but he supposes risk assessment requires a lot of the same skills as public relations. Calculating the odds of earthquakes and house fires might not be entirely analogous to social media management, but Eddie feels like he’s seen enough online scandals come and go to tease out the base patterns. And when you strip away the window dressing, they’re more or less predictable.

“Okay then, guess we’re all on the same page,” Richie says, slapping his palms down on his thighs. “What charity should I do? It should probably be a gay one, right?”

“Yeah, definitely. Let me pull up Charity Tracker,” Steve says while pulling his phone from his pocket. “Ideally we want one that has LGBT right there in the title.”

“This is starting to feel like a publicity stunt,” Richie remarks, prompting Steve to shoot him a deadpan stare.

“This is a publicity stunt. This is the dictionary definition of a publicity stunt.”

Richie raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, you’re the one with the contract to my soul. The only problem is for some reason people seem to think I’m fucking loaded. I could donate my entire life savings and they’d still call me a stingy bastard. Yesterday I saw some jackass saying I made $10 million off my last special.”

“It’s up to $15 million now,” Steve adds.

“Yeah, and I just paid off my house and car so realistically I could maybe swing up to $100k if I want to give my accountant an aneurysm.”

$15 million? Eddie rolls his eyes. Fuck Netflix for deluding people into thinking mid-tier comedians get paid anywhere near the level of the Hollywood elite.

Suddenly another idea hits him. One that will hopefully spare Richie the ordeal of blowing a huge chunk of his savings on a publicity stunt designed to appease a small contingent of Twitter.

“Why don’t you do that thing where every time someone writes you a stupid reply you donate $100 and post a screenshot? Once they catch on they’ll probably stop replying, so you might only be out a few grand. Plus you get to be snarky in the replies. People love that shit.”

“You’re getting way too into this,” Richie scolds him, but he can’t hide his smile. Richie used to love it when Eddie got like this as a kid: wound up and itching to do something stupid. Richie likes it when he gets petty; he’s told him as much.

“Hey, it’s fun, and I’ve only got twelve followers, so I don’t get to pull this kind of shit.”

“I thought you had nineteen?”

“I lost a few in the war.”

Maybe he’ll give Richie a detailed rundown of his rage reply spree at some point later. Eddie should probably just deactivate his account to spare himself the encroaching heart attack, but he knows he’ll just reactivate within a week. It’s happened several times before.

“What should I actually tweet though?” Richie asks. “Because I’ll roast people in real life all day long, but I can say with complete honesty that I’ve never gotten into a pissing contest with anyone on Twitter before because I’m a motherfucking professional, and yes, you can quote me on that. Eds, you’re better at this, help me out.”

Eddie hums in concentration. Shit, now that he has to think about the actual wording he’s drawing a blank. He remembers how obsessed his mom got with conservative TV while she was in assisted living. She’d always been right of center, but more or less kept her head out of politics and stuck with her daytime soaps and lifetime movies. But once she hit sixty her mind seemed to dissolve into a mess of conspiracy theories and racist outcries, escalating to the point where he could barely stand to be in the same room as her for more than ten minutes at a time. Now he finally has a shot at revenge. A very small, petty taste of revenge.

“Okay, um… how ‘bout something like, ‘Hey @foxnews’ – or whatever their handle is – ‘I’ve been wiping your cum off my face all morning. Since you’ve been so generous with your money shots, for every ignorant-ass reply on this tweet I’m donating $100 to the LGBT fund concerning LGBT issues for LGBT rights. Get my face off your network and get your mouth off my dick.’ We can workshop it, but something like that.”

Richie and Steve stare at him, obviously impressed.

“Eds, how the fuck can you do a better impression of me than I can?”


	5. Chapter 5

_The fact that you waited so long to come out proves that you know deep down there’s something very wrong with same-sex attraction. Tragic to see someone surrender after fighting against it so long. But if you ever find your way back I will support you_

_-You are supporting me. With your generous donation that will go towards securing my legal rights! I can’t thank you enough_

_Gay people don’t understand that this kind of behavior is why they’re so disliked. They use being “free-spirited” as an excuse to say obscene things and demean others. It’s very sad_

_-Funny how no one had a problem with all the obscene shit I said before coming out. Almost like there’s a double standard or something_

_Homophobia is understandable. Hate is not. There are many reasons to disapprove of gay people, but none to justify promoting hate_

_-What kind of FOIL method homophobic algebra is this shit?_

_FUCK U IM NEVER LETTING MY KIDS WATCH YOUR SHIT AGAIN!!_

_-Jesus Christ you let your kids watch my shit? Just for that I’m donating this $100 to a fund for parent management training_

_@foxnews is just trying to defend you. Regardless of your personal politics you have to admit they have a point. The left attacked you unprompted simply for being gay. Why would you try to win them over when it's clear they don't care about you in the slightest?_

_-You feel like saying that again without the confederate flag in your banner?_

_The problem isn’t that your gay its that you lied to us and we deserve compensation_

_-Yes and we all know the #1 rule of comedy is always tell the truth. I see you’re a fan of Dan Gillespie. Didn’t his last special have no less than three different stories about how his mother died?_

_I should of spit in your face when I saw you in Dallas_

_-Damn my sexts aren't even this dirty_

_I have been supporting you for 15 years. I’ve followed you through the worst of it. As our country has slowly and insidiously been emasculated by the liberal state that seeks to control us by shaming us for speaking truth, I have followed you. How could they blind you too?_

_-Someone please make this a copypasta_

_This is pathetic. you think sucking sjw dick will pay your bills? u just took a massive shit on your whole audience. better not waste your money on me bc you’ll be out on the streets by this time next year. you think the libs will give you any money? they fucking hate u_

Two hours ago those words would have hit way too close to home, but by now it’s clear that the man is in fact very wrong.

It’s hard to process just how instantaneous the shift is. Richie’s initial tweet already has twenty thousand likes and maybe only 2% of the replies are actually negative. As Eddie predicted, the right-wing objectors quickly realized that replying was a losing game, so they withdrew to other corners of the app to talk shit in the safety of their own echo chambers.

So far Richie’s tweet has received only twenty-three negative replies, but hundreds of positive ones. Gifs, emojis, reaction images, all cheering Richie on and mocking the idiots stupid enough to play right into his hand. Steve’s been monitoring the response on his own phone, and as predicted, screenshots of Richie’s replies are already going viral in their own right, and his name is currently sitting pretty as the number one trending topic.

It’s unbelievable. All the vitriol of yesterday seemed to evaporate, as if it never existed. Could it really be this easy? Yesterday people were acting like not even Richie’s firstborn child could atone for his sins, but apparently the price of forgiveness was $2,300 and a handful of snarky comebacks.

Eddie’s positive that if Richie had put out an apology and donated his $100k then nobody would have given a shit. They probably would have accused him of trying to bury the controversy with money, or even worse, attempting to buy his gay card. No apology or PR statement could have had this type of effect. It turns out that when the chips are down, betting on the age-old proverb of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is always a winning hand.

What people don’t know – and can never find out – is that Richie didn’t write a single one of the replies.

Richie was smiling as he typed out the initial tweet, but within seconds of posting it his eyes seemed to glaze over. His face went white and his expression fell distant. He stared at the first reply, reading it over and over again, looking ready to be sick as he tried to think of something, anything, to say in response.

Eddie watched him struggle and felt his stomach twist with guilt. Why the fuck did he suggest this? Soliciting homophobic harassment? This was Richie’s personal brand of hell. But it was too late now. They had to see this through. But before Eddie could suggest taking over, Richie held out his phone and gave Eddie his PayPal password, then he disappeared upstairs without another word.

So Eddie sat there typing out reply after reply, all the fury of the last two days manifesting in the words on the screen. He only bothered crafting comebacks for the more articulate replies, as most were barely a step above key smashes and lacked enough substance to merit a witty insult, so he just posted screenshots of the donation page and left others to mock the accounts on his behalf.

He used to fantasize about something akin to this as a kid. Anytime someone called him some shit in the hallway he’d envision spitting back a snarky insult that would have the whole school laughing along with him, but he was generally smart enough to keep his mouth shut. But even as an adult he'll still occasionally get lost in revenge fantasies, and he can’t deny that living them out online is pretty addictive since he can say whatever shit he wants without fear of getting his teeth knocked out. In fact, he doesn’t even need an account with a million followers to bully random homophobes. He could do that all day long from his anon account with twelve followers if he wanted to, but he doesn’t need a therapist to tell him how monumentally fucked up that would be.

It’s also fucked up how easy it is to ignore the fact that he’s talking to real people. It’s surprisingly easy to pretend that all the replies on his feed were generated by bots, and indeed most of them are so predictable and stupid that they read like artificial parodies. It feels like playing chess online. In order to win, all Eddie has to do is outsmart a computer. Just pretend it's not real and move on.

While watching thousands of people cheer Richie on, it occurs to Eddie that he could be anyone. Sure, the fact that he knows Richie intimately helps lend him some credibility, but he’s aware that someone with far weaker qualifications could make the act believable. Eddie could just as well be some random intern, or a stranger hired by a PR firm. After all, how many celebrities actually manage their own social media? How many viral comebacks and publicity feuds were really orchestrated by third parties? He could probably ask Steve about it, but Eddie’s learned that secrets in Hollywood have gotten a lot tighter in the age of social media.

The replies on Richie’s initial tweet are now flooded with people posting screenshots of their own donations. The charity they selected just issued their own official tweet of support. The cohort that spent all of yesterday dragging Richie through the mud was now littering his timeline with champagne emojis. The message was loud and clear: Richie played their game and won. He’s earned their respect, and now he's allowed to sit at their lunch table.

By the end of it, Eddie feels like he’s entitled to a masters degree in media relations. He’s qualified for a job with any PR firm in LA, and Steve tells him as much. If the insurance industry isn’t morally reprehensible enough for him he could upgrade to a job cleaning up celebrity messes. It pays better too, and the work never runs dry.

It’s been twenty minutes since the last negative reply, and Eddie’s guessing there won’t be many more now that the window has come and gone. He’s sweating, high on adrenaline and outrage, satisfaction laced with disgust. He feels like he just finished the SAT, or a twelve-hour video game session. His eyes hurt, his head aches, and he wants to crush his phone in a hydraulic press and take a long-ass shower.

Once the timeline cools to a simmer, Steve gets up and says he’ll head back to the office to keep an eye on things. Eddie just nods, too wrung out to formulate a proper goodbye. Then he heads upstairs to the guest room, his vision so distorted it feels like walking through a funhouse with moving walls. When he opens the door he sees Richie sitting on the edge of the bed with Kismet splayed across his lap like an orange piece of taffy. They’ve been talking about getting a cat for a month now, but decided it was still too soon, but maybe now would be a good time to head down to the shelter and pick one up.

“So what’s the prognosis, doc?” Richie asks with a comically forced smile.

Eddie softly closes the door behind him.

“The bill was $2,300. You’re officially uncancelled.”

“Wow, that was easy.”

“Yeah, it’s almost like they weren’t actually mad in the first place.”

Richie lets out a breathy laugh. Eddie takes a seat beside him on the edge of the unmade bed and reaches down to scratch Kismet’s back. She arches into his hand and opens her mouth in a wide yawn while flexing her paws into the air. Admittedly, she's pretty damn cute. Eddie never had any pets while growing up because his mom always insisted he was allergic, and Myra did the same. Which sucks since having a dog or cat probably would have helped with his anxiety. His brain is still vibrating in seasick currents, but just sitting here and petting her seems to be speeding up the decompression process as he slowly drifts back to the real world.

After a minute or two of silence Richie takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand.

“You’d think I’d have thicker skin by now,” he says with a smile. He’s rubbing his eyes so hard Eddie’s worried they’ll turn red.

“You shouldn’t need it.”

Richie lets out a short laugh. “Tragically I’m in the one profession where I really do.” He puts his glasses back on and stares blankly at the teal-green wall. “I got into standup because I was convinced I couldn’t do anything else. But I always thought I could just get on stage, say some dumb shit, then walk off and disappear. I didn’t think I’d ever get big enough for it to follow me home.”

Eddie wants to tell him that it shouldn’t have to follow him home. After all, who the fuck could have seen anything like this coming? Getting heckled once or twice a month isn't comparable to tens of thousands of strangers trash-talking you on the world stage, the depths of their disgust perpetually sitting no more than a few clicks away. Twitter nobodies with a thousand followers probably get more harassment in a day than celebrities of twenty years ago got in a month, and it’s fucking insane that people think this is all so normal.

When all of this started yesterday morning, everyone seemed to be operating under the assumption that Richie has never suffered a day in his life, so it was simply their responsibility to bring him down to everyone else’s level. But Richie knows what it's like to go through your twenties without health insurance. He scrubbed toilets, worked illegally-long shifts, and on one dark occasion pulled out his own decaying tooth and wound up with $16,000 of debt for the subsequent infection that got him hospitalized. There were periods where sleeping in shelters was a normal part of his routine, and he even showed Eddie the old notebooks where he tallied every purchase down to the penny, whether it was just a can of soup or a subway token. 

Richie managed to survive until thirty-two without any of the prescriptions he desperately needed, and up until five years ago, Eddie was earning more than him. So yeah, it’s frustrating that the second Richie was stable enough to open a savings account people began calling him a rich elitist asshole and using that as an excuse to accost him with all of their societal grievances because apparently having a lot of Twitter followers means you have senators on speed dial.

The reality is that Richie has had a really hard fucking life, but of course he can’t publicly complain about it without people rolling their eyes, so all he can do is take it, which he does, every fucking day. So yeah, maybe Richie won’t complain about the way people treat him, but Eddie sure as fuck will.

Suddenly Richie laughs out of nowhere, causing Kismet to twitch in surprise.

“Sorry, just realized something funny.” Richie gives Kismet a few long pets to calm her down. “Remember when we were kids and would always talk about what superpowers we wanted? And none of us were stupid enough to pick telepathy because we’d hear all the mean shit people were thinking about us? I just realized that celebrities are basically mind readers. All we have to do is google ourselves and we know exactly what people think of us.”

Eddie turns that thought over in his head, trying to poke holes in it, wishing he could refute it outright.

“No, you’re just seeing the worst of the worst. Last year if you’d looked yourself up you wouldn’t have seen what I thought of you.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

“You made me laugh. Even before I knew who you were, I liked you. And no, I never tweeted about how much I wanted you to fuck me in the shower, but I was definitely thinking it.”

Richie responds with a small laugh, which apparently rattles Kismet enough that she takes the opportunity to leap down from his lap, satisfied with her dose of attention. They watch her languidly stretch out her spine before strutting towards the window and jumping onto the sill, her tail swaying contently.

Richie sighs and brushes some of the orange fur off his lap.

“Is your office hiring? I think it’s time I diversify a bit.”

“What are your qualifications?”

“I graduated fifty-ninth out of a class of sixty-two. That’s impressive, right?”

Before Eddie can formulate a witty reply, Richie’s phone vibrates in his hand.

“Shit,” he curses, hoping it’s just a text from Bill asking what they want for dinner.

He looks at the screen, and to his disappointment, the name in the banner is unfamiliar.

“Hey, do you know an Irving Fuchs?”

Richie nods. “Yeah, she’s a comic out in New York. We hung out a few times.”

Eddie skims the twenty-odd words available on the home screen, and quickly realizes it’s not just another innocuous congratulation text. He can’t infer what it’s about, but it looks serious.

“You might want to read this,” he says, holding out the phone.

Richie looks down at it reluctantly. Finally he takes it, nervous like a kid getting back a bad test. He unlocks it, and Eddie watches his eyes minutely dart back and forth across the screen. Eddie’s palms start sweating as he tries to gauge Richie’s expression, which to his relief remains more or less neutral. Maybe it’s just a petty industry thing. Or a personal matter, something that’s none of Eddie’s business. Maybe it’s nothing. It’s probably nothing.

But before he can ask any questions, Richie holds the phone out for him, the text message still open.

“Can I read it?” Eddie asks, morbidly nosy.

Richie gives a small nod.

_Hey Rich, sorry to message you out of nowhere like this, but it’s pretty serious. You know Terrence Clark by any chance? One of the execs over at City Arts Entertainment? He’s my agent’s boss and he just came down to one of my rehearsals and told me I should accuse you of saying a bunch of sexist shit to me the last time you were in New York?? Don’t worry I’m obviously not going to do it. I’d never lie about shit like that. But I have no idea what he’ll do if I say no, but I’m guessing it won’t be good. I’m a pretty small fish around here and I have no idea who to contact because I don’t know who’s on his side. I’m sorry to wrap you up in this, but I could really use your help. Feel free to screenshot this and share it with whoever you need. I’m just really freaked out. Please message me back when you get a chance._

Eddie wants to burn this whole fucking industry to the ground. His hand is shaking so hard it’s difficult to finish the last sentence. His rage was just beginning to temper off, but now it’s reached critical levels. He’s never been a fan of physical violence, but he’s definitely going to start amassing a body count if he has to float in Richie’s orbit for much longer.

“Jesus Christ, I fucking hate it here,” Eddie groans. Seriously, why the fuck is this happening? Who decided to sign them up for this credit-less crash course in crisis management? Should they rent out a war room? Seriously, what the fuck?

“Steve just left. Should I call and tell him to turn back around?” Eddie asks, but his anger quickly turns to worry when he catches sight of Richie’s stone-white face. His brow is glistening with sweat, and he looks dangerously close to passing out.

“Hey, you okay?” Eddie asks, debating whether or not he should get him to lie down.

“Yeah, sorry.” Richie shakes his head, but his expression hardly changes. He looks completely shellshocked, but that’s understandable. This shit is fucking scary. Eddie has no idea who this Clark guy is, but he’s fully prepared to curb stomp him and not lose any sleep over it.

“Should I call Steve?” Eddie asks again. “Me and him can deal with this.”

“No, I’m fine,” Richie says, then brings up a hand to wipe the sweat from his upper lip. “He’s the guy, by the way. Terrence Clark, he’s the guy.”

Eddie stares at him, trying to figure out who the hell he’s talking about. What guy? Richie mentioned having a few casual rivals, but no one malicious enough to pull a stunt like this. Eddie searches through his memory: pulling up old conversations, skimming through the handful of people Richie has introduced him to, but he can’t pin down a single suspect.

But then it hits him, and it hits him hard.

“Holy shit,” Eddie breathes, robbed of anything more articulate.

“Yep,” Richie replies with a pronounced pop.

Eddie’s gaze falls unfocused as he feels his brain carve out a new little room right between his eyes and stuff it to the brim with unapologetic hate. He wants to offer some words of comfort, or consolation, but instead what comes out is, “Want me to rip off his balls and shove them up his ass?”

Richie laughs. “They’re so small you wouldn’t have much trouble.”

Then he stands from the bed and walks toward the window. Kismet lets out a needy meow as he approaches, and goes quiet when he obediently begins scratching between her ears.

Eddie reads back through the text, so enraged he wants scream.

“This is so fucked up. Has he tried anything like this before?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, he did a pretty decent job blacklisting me around the North Side, but he wasn’t exactly at the top of the food chain. Back then he was running this dingy three-person agency above a Greek restaurant, and even the company he works for now doesn’t have any major headliners. But shit, I can’t catch a break for five fucking minutes.”

Eddie’s seriously worried that Richie’s going to pass out. He’s holding himself funny, and the pitch of his voice keeps shifting, like he can’t quite gauge his own volume. It’s surreal being caught between duel urges to comfort him while simultaneously wanting to bludgeon someone to death.

“Maybe he thought coming out was a sign you were going to start telling people,” Eddie suggests.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. And he probably saw everyone coming for my throat and knew he could get away with tossing on some gasoline.”

“This is pretty fucking sloppy though.” Eddie looks back down at the screen. “I mean, why try to enlist someone you’re on good terms with?”

“I think most of his decisions are based on the assumption that no one is ever on good terms with anyone.”

Now that’s something that Eddie can comprehend. Sounds like every guy in his office who went to business school. But honestly, maybe Eddie should take a few lessons from them. Being emotional won't do him any favors right now. He needs to be practical, and level-headed. He needs to figure out what this guy’s game is and how to stop it. This is some fucking new age warfare, that’s for sure.

“He must be really freaked out though,” Eddie says. “Coercing someone to commit defamation against a major celebrity is one hell of a gamble, and it already backfired. Wait, do you think there might be others? I mean, if one person calls you sexist that’s a pain in the ass, but if multiple people do it at once that’s a shit show.”

“Fuck, you’re right. Shit.” Richie runs both hands through his hair, gripping it at the base and screwing his eyes shut. “What should I do? Should I tweet about this? I mean, if I expose him then he's got nothing to stand on. I might be a black sheep around here, but no one’s going to believe him over Irving. She’s 5’1” and teaches kindergarten."

Eddie tries to analyze that suggestion as cogently as he can. It just feels too easy. Richie’s right, if he calls Clark’s bluff now, then it’s over. But could it really be that simple?

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “It just doesn’t sit right. I mean, from all angles this is a fucking joke. He must have a contingency plan. I mean, it’s just so….”

“Stupid?” Richie offers.

“Yeah, exactly. I mean, he must want it to get out, right?”

Richie crosses his arms and leans back against the window. Eddie can practically see the gears rotating in his head.

“Honestly, I think he’s just a fucking idiot. I think he lives in a fantasy where he’s the most powerful person in the world and everyone around him will do exactly what he says. That's what I did.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that. He honest to god doesn’t know what to say. The clock is ticking though. If they can just get through the rest of the day, maybe they can be humans again later tonight.

“Irving said you can screenshot her text. I’d ask her if you can black out her name and tweet it. What are the possible cons?”

“More fucking publicity.”

“Good publicity though. The best kind.”

Richie laughs. “You fit in great around here.”

After staring out the window a few seconds longer, Richie gives Kismet’s head one final scratch before returning to the bed, which Eddie is grateful for because he really didn’t look stable on his feet.

“Yeah, let me text her back. What should I say?”

“I don’t know. But want me to type it out for you?” Eddie asks, seeing how hard his hands are shaking.

“No, I got it. I’m good.”

Richie forces a smile and holds out his hand, leaving Eddie no choice but to pass back his phone. Richie sniffs loudly before taking a deep breath, then he stares at the screen for so long it briefly dims into power save mode before he gives it a tap to wake it back up. Finally he starts typing, tilting the screen so Eddie can follow along.

 _Shit I’m so sorry this is happening. Yes whatever you need I’ll help you out. You don’t have to worry about losing any work over this. Is it alright if I tweet out your message? I’ll black out your name but I figure there might be others in the same position, and I want to let them know I’m on their side_

“That look okay?” Richie asks.

“Yeah, looks good.”

Eddie has absolutely no frame of reference for what “good” might look like in this scenario, but he figures Irving will be on their side no matter what, so the formalities are more or less irrelevant.

“Cool.” Richie nods. He lingers over the button a moment longer, then presses send.

They both stare at the screen, and to their relief, the grey typing bubbles appear almost immediately.

_Sure of course! Shit I didn’t even think of that. Yeah go ahead. Sorry again that you have to deal with this on top of everything else_

_Hey don’t worry about me. Just take care of yourself. I’ll make sure you get new representation. Everything will be fine_

Eddie has a sense that last sentence is more for Richie’s benefit than Irving’s.

The exchange is short, but Richie’s practically panting by the end of it. He’s sweating so hard his glasses keep slipping down his nose. With a couple flashes he screenshots their conversation and takes a minute to black out her name, but once it comes time to actually open Twitter, he goes still, his thumb hovering over the blue icon.

“I can do it,” Eddie offers, keeping his voice as level as he can. He’s expecting Richie to shrug him off again, but to his surprise, Richie just lets out another awkward laugh and hands over his phone without complaint.

Eddie knows full well that they should consult with Steve before dropping a bomb like this, but time is somewhat of the essence here. If there are others, and they manage to get out a fake story first, then this whole thing will just look like a ploy to discredit the accuser. Even if things get sorted within a matter of hours, that’s still a layer of chaos and uncertainty they really don’t need on their plate. They have to get the first word, and it can’t wait.

“What should I write?” Eddie asks. It’s funny, when he needs to be snarky he can impersonate Richie all day long. But this is heavy; it's important, and he’s quickly learning that he really doesn’t have the stomach for it.

Richie sighs, bringing a hand up to his mouth in concentration.

“‘If anyone else is in this position please get in touch with my management. Terrence Clark was my first agent back in the 90s and he has a long history of screwing with people’s lives.’”

Eddie types as fast as he can, determined to not make Richie repeat himself. He skims the tweet, spellchecks it, then reads it again. Then he attaches the screenshots from Richie’s camera roll, and proofreads it one more time. With his sanity dangling by a thread, he presses the button, and just like that, they’re back in the news cycle. A single tap, and the world keeps spinning.

He should probably call Steve now to give him a heads up on the category ten media blitz headed his way, but he just can’t find the energy to type out one more goddamn letter. He knows Richie is relying on him to serve as his proxy, but the fatigue is already gnawing at his eyes. He hates this. Everything about it. He hates it so fucking much. Why would anyone do this? Was this really inevitable? It's hard to interpret the events of the last two days as anything less than punishment for coming out. These people, they took that experience away from Richie, any joy or fulfillment rendered unsalvageable, a miserable ordeal beginning to end, and Eddie will never forgive any of them for it.

Then something important occurs to him: a question he really doesn’t want to ask.

“Hey, does Steve know what happened?” he asks, hoping he doesn't have to elaborate any further.

Richie hesitates a moment, then shakes his head no.

“Don’t you think you should tell him?" Eddie suggests, gentle as he can. "Just so he can look out for you if something comes up?”

Richie’s face somehow manages to plummet a shade whiter.

God, this is excruciating. Eddie doesn’t even want to think about the possibility of Richie’s secret getting out, but how could it? It’s not like Clark’s going to confess anything, so as long as Richie stays quiet, Eddie can’t think of any possible way it could get leaked. But still, this whole thing is going to attract a tsunami of media attention, which means journalists and civilians alike will be digging through everyone’s trash in search of a motive.

Richie told him a bit about Clark before, but never mentioned him by name. According to Richie, he was a piece of shit in just about every way a person can be, so maybe they can get away with dismissing his motives as nothing more than a personal grudge. But is that really convincing enough to justify an illegal smear campaign?

Whatever explanation they settle on, Eddie hopes the public will take it at face value. He hopes Richie won’t have to volunteer a single scrap of information he doesn’t want to give, but unfortunately, if this goes to court he won’t be able to get away with lying by omission.

Richie sighs again and rubs at his already bloodshot eyes. “It’s not like telling people would make any difference legally. The statute of limitations passed almost fifteen years ago.” He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, then lets out a breathy laugh. “Am I evil for hoping he did some awful shit to someone else so they can expose him instead of me?”

Eddie runs a hand down his bare arm. “I think that’s a very human feeling.”

Richie laughs again. “When people describe something as human that usually means evil.”

“Well, I’m hoping the same thing. So I guess I’m evil too.”

“That’s old news. How many times did your company get sued last year?”

Just then, Richie’s phone vibrates in Eddie’s palm. It’s a text from Steve, and the opening line reads, _Are you fucking kidding me?!!_

“This should be fun,” Eddie remarks dryly, followed by his own sardonic laugh.


	6. Chapter 6

There were four women in total, but two asked to remain anonymous. The other two were in talks to press charges against Clark for coercion in the first degree, a class D felony. All four were low-tier in the industry, living gig to gig with multiple side hustles seeing them through. Irving was the only one in Richie’s contact list, and the rest he only met in passing.

The story blew up on social media in a matter of seconds and was quickly scooped up by every major news outlet. By 9:00 a.m. the next morning Clark was officially ousted from his seat at the company and stripped of all benefits and privileges. Eddie still can’t get over the fact that if the guy had just minded his own fucking business then Richie would have left him alone.

Seriously, what the hell did he expect? His comeuppance was certifiably comical. His instructions to Irving were simple: trash Richie on Twitter; so she promptly walked to the other side of the theater and sent Richie a text that demolished Clark's entire plan before he could even get back to the office. His incompetence was embarrassing. Richie was completely right: Clark was vastly delusional about his own level of power and a fucking idiot, and everyone online seemed to agree. The memes were so hilarious it made Eddie angry.

Everyone’s itching for a trial, but Eddie really hopes the whole thing gets settled out of court so Richie won’t be obligated to testify. That would pave the way for a lot of questions he’d really rather not answer.

Also, from a publicity perspective, the timing was unbeatable. If Fox News set up the pitch then Clark helped knock it out of the park. What followed in the days and hours after was an outpouring of support from every corner of the industry. Celebrities who had delayed their coming out congratulations now felt safe supporting Richie on their official accounts. Multiple women in the comedy scene tweeted out glowing praise, sharing stories about how he never belittled female comics; how he did them favors ranging from giving them recommendations to hooking them up with gigs; how he complimented their writing and paid for their Ubers, and even drove them to the airport without asking for anything in return.

But of course Richie did those things; he’s a nice person, a fact that seemed to confuse a lot of people. They didn’t seem to understand how someone could put on a stage persona and tell edgy jokes while still being perfectly kind in real life. It was at odds with their view of the world, and many stubbornly refused to believe it was true. Kindness was a quality reserved for good people, but Richie told fat jokes, something only bad people did. The logic was foolproof: good people never hurt others (unless they deserved it); Richie told jokes that hurt people (who didn't deserve it); ergo, Richie was, infallibly, a bad person.

_Friendly reminder that Richie Tozier still hasn’t apologized for X, Y, and Z._

_Friendly reminder that stage personas are always a self-portrait._

_Friendly reminder that being kind to a few does not negate being cruel to a million._

Friendly reminder this, friendly reminder that, Eddie feels like he’s one friendly reminder away from being informed that Hitler was also polite to waitstaff.

Of course Eddie recognizes that the things Richie’s getting praise for are pretty bare minimum. It’s not like he was leading protests or building homeless shelters. He was just being a normal, nice person, but Eddie supposes the entertainment industry is such a hell scape that the barest of crumbs might as well be a feast. It’s also obvious that a lot of the positive impressions women had of him stemmed from the fact that he never tried to hit on them or extoll any favors, which yeah, duh.

And Eddie doesn’t want Richie to know this, but prior to his grand uncancelling most of the negative anecdotes circulating online were related to his drinking problem. A few threads went quasi-viral about how someone met him while he was completely wasted and it made them uncomfortable. Or they saw him drinking somewhere he shouldn’t have been, or puking backstage in a trashcan. But now the narrative was flipped on its head. Four days ago Richie’s alcoholism was the subject of criticism and ridicule, but now people were shaming anyone who dared bring it up in a negative light. “Don’t they know that alcoholism is a disease? Don’t they have any sympathy for a person who was closeted and clearly struggling with addiction?” It’s funny how Richie’s biggest vice was suddenly a sympathetic burden, and the fact that he quit drinking three months prior only added to his heroic stature, as “clearly he’s trying to better himself, and anyone using his past struggles against him ought to be ashamed of themself.”

It’s not lost on Eddie that the people making those tweets are the same ones who just three days ago shamed Richie for telling jokes about addicts.

Richie said you can only be two things around here: a victim or a bigot, and so far, Eddie hasn’t found any fault with that analysis. The line between being an enemy and an ally is so precariously thin, and it moves faster than a jump rope. People online seem to monitor human decency like brokers on a trading room floor: tracking a series of abstract lines as they rise with each positive review and plummet in response to the slightest whiff of hearsay.

Eddie’s not sure why he can’t stop lurking in this shit. Why he can’t kick the impulse to seek it out. He’ll close all the tabs then reopen them five minutes later. He knows it’s unproductive and unhealthy, and not reflective of reality. The entire industry was firmly in Richie’s corner and always has been. He’s gaining followers rapidly and receiving national praise as one of the few decent men in Hollywood. So why the fuck can’t Eddie just ignore the small faction of angry people who won’t stop insisting that Richie deserves to die in a ditch?

He knows why. It’s because he’s terrified that if he looks away for a single second the apocalypse will arrive in his absence. Richie’s detractors have already developed a distinct formula for disseminating their outrage: typically someone will post a screenshot of a tweet, or a sound bite, or an interview clip, then people will swarm the replies expressing their revulsion and abhorrence, and other words that nobody uses in real life. The tweets never gain much traction, rarely garnering more than a couple hundred likes, but Eddie can’t stop staring at the metrics, his anxiety spiking if a tweet creeps above five hundred, wondering if it will be the snowflake that causes the avalanche to break.

Richie still won’t let any of the other Losers publicly support him, or even acknowledge that they know him out of fear that the scales will tip again. Not even Bill, who’s already been cancelled as much as a fiction writer with no online presence can be. And as the days pass and the media storm begins to wane, Eddie can’t help but dwell on a very important question:

'Why hasn’t anyone noticed me yet?'

He was prepared for it as soon as he moved to LA. He figured someone would snap a picture of him and Richie at Walgreens and that would be the end of it; the next day he’d see his face plastered on magazine covers in the grocery store checkout aisle. But to his surprise, nobody seemed to notice him. He figured things would ramp up once Richie was no longer on hiatus, but within the last few days he’s become one of the most topical celebrities in the world, and yet Eddie still can’t find any mention of himself either on or off the official record. He’s sure they’ve been spotted in public before, but then again, Richie hangs out with lots of people in public. But now that everyone knows he’s gay won’t they start scrutinizing all the men he associates with? Eddie can’t help but picture some journalist with a chart full of red string trying to piece together Eddie’s identity from a handful of blurry security photos.

Eddie knows that his existence will become public knowledge eventually. It’s unavoidable, and when it happens he’ll just have to deal with it, but that doesn’t means he wants to. He never realized how much he took anonymity for granted. He doesn’t even like it when the barista at Starbucks addresses him by name. Sure, being recognized by cashiers is a stupidly small concern compared to what Richie has to deal with, but Eddie can’t help it; he likes being invisible. He likes passing unnoticed, as he’s successfully managed to do his entire life. He hates publicity, he hates putting on a persona, and he hates this newfound fear that if he makes one mistake it will destroy his life, and Richie’s too.

Eddie doesn’t have any proper skeletons in his closet, and even if he did, he’s all but untouchable by virtue of not having a digital footprint, except for the painstakingly crafted caricature Myra built of him on her social media, which she has since deleted in full. But still, Eddie has definitely told more off-color jokes in his life than the ones Richie was getting called a Neo-Nazi over. You could probably fill an entire book with all the things Eddie's said that would be worthy of a cancellable tweet. In addition, Eddie has always been comically disliked by his colleagues and coworkers, and in retrospect, he really should have been nicer in some of his past relationships, but he can’t think of any transgression terrible enough to prompt someone from his past to pull out a soapbox and megaphone.

It’s unfair really. Eddie is objectively far more of a bastard than Richie ever was or ever will be, but since he’s contributed nothing whatsoever to art or society he’ll likely make it to his grave without so much as a subtweet.

Even so, he can’t shake this mental image of every person he’s ever wronged sitting around a conference table, comparing notes and drafting out the statement that will compel everyone around the globe to point their fingers at him in disgust. It sounds stupid, but it’s making him so anxious he can hardly sleep.

Suddenly his phone starts vibrating by his elbow, causing him to jolt. He’s currently sitting at the desk in Richie’s study-cum-guest room, which Eddie coopted a couple days ago as his home office.

He looks at the caller ID. It’s Myra, which is annoying, but better her than another spam bot he has to research out of fear that his number got leaked.

“Hello?” he answers.

“Hello,” she replies coldly.

Silence.

“How are you?” he asks.

“I’m well.”

Eddie almost laughs at the pretension in her tone. Sometimes she’ll unconsciously slip into a faux mid-Atlantic accent when she’s angry.

There’s another long pause before she speaks again.

“I just wanted to confirm that you’re still flying out on Monday. I imagine things are a bit hectic for you right now.”

Eddie shuts his eyes and cringes. Of course she knows what’s going on. It’d be naive to think otherwise, but he was really hoping they wouldn’t have to discuss it.

“More so for Richie. Not really for me. But yeah, I’ll still be there.”

“Good to hear.”

“Yeah, good. Is there anything else?”

More silence. Eddie stares at the spreadsheet on his screen that he hasn’t touched for at least an hour. Each second of silence feels longer than the last.

“Are you planning to go public soon?” she asks.

Eddie groans internally. He was really hoping she wouldn’t ask that.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to stay out of it the best I can. So far people don’t seem to know I exist, and I’m going to try to keep it that way. At least until the worst of this blows over.”

“But you won’t tell anyone about me, right?”

Eddie cringes at the thought. It’s funny how mutual secrecy is actually one of the few things they’re in full agreement on.

“No, of course not. It’s nobody’s business anyway.”

Myra lets out a long, heavy sigh. Why does she sound so disappointed? Isn’t that the answer she wanted to hear?

“I still haven’t told my parents yet,” she says forlornly, and Eddie can’t help but feel a pang of guilt deep in his gut. He may be an asshole, but he’s not completely heartless, and she knows where all his buttons lie.

“I’m sorry.” He’s probably said those two words to her ten thousand times over the last seven months.

“Is it alright if I lie?” she asks. “If I tell them we decided this before you met him again?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. You can tell people whatever you want. You can tell them you left me for all I care.”

“Thank you.”

The conversation stalls once again. Eddie runs his tongue along the inner scar of his cheek as he tries to think of a proper closing statement. But before he can make his escape, she continues.

“Things would have been easier if you’d left me for someone normal.”

Eddie furrows his brow. Normal? That’s an odd choice of word. Eddie wants to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s just using it as a synonym for not-famous, but he has a suspicion it’s a bit more coded than that.

“Yeah, I know. It’s an adjustment.”

When he answered the call his battery was only at 11%, and at this point he’s hoping his phone will just die and spare him an awkward goodbye.

They’ve never talked about his relationship with Richie out loud. Eddie has also failed to definitively state where his sexual allegiances align. He feels guilty for leaving her with so few answers, but he doesn’t feel like she’s earned them, and the paranoid part of his brain doesn’t want to give her any information she could potentially use against them. Besides, once the papers are signed next Tuesday they’ll hopefully never see each other again, so there’s no point in trying to preserve any bridges.

“As long as you don’t tell people about me you can do whatever you like,” she says with palpable distaste. “But still, it’s humiliating. Eventually someone’s going to find me. They’ll find me and photograph me and laugh. Because of course you would leave me.”

Now that really sinks past the barrier of his ribs. He hates to say it, but she’s right. Richie’s certainly not famous enough for the general population to give a shit about his boyfriend’s ex-wife, but all it would take is one person with an unhealthy obsession. Eddie’s not ready to forgive her for how she treated him, but she certainly doesn’t deserve to be dragged into the limelight. But the unfortunate truth is that Eddie doesn’t have any power to prevent it. The best he can do is keep his mouth shut, head down, and hope that’s enough.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I wish things didn’t have to be this complicated. Is there anything else?”

“No, that’s all.”

“Okay. Bye then.”

“Bye.”

She hangs up with no further ceremony.

Eddie stares at his spreadsheet for a minute longer. He can’t remember what his boss wanted him to do with it, but instead of rereading the email with the instructions, he opens a new Chrome tab and carries out his bi-daily ritual of googling his own name.

Despite the fact that Eddie has no social media, his last name is rare enough that he still appears several times on the first page of Google. It’s mainly just old newsletters and outdated directories from past jobs: nothing incriminating or even noteworthy. Any journalist doing a background check on him would think he was the most boring person alive.

There’s also no evidence that he even left New York. Everything connected to their current lifestyle is filed under Richie’s name, and Eddie’s boss was nice enough to let him remove his name and contact information from the company website. Persuading him wasn’t difficult; Eddie just honestly told him that he was in a relationship with a public figure and wanted to limit his exposure, which apparently is a pretty common story around here because his boss asked no further questions and then proceeded to tell him all about his affair with Nicole Kidman.

Eddie can’t preserve his anonymity forever though, and the paranoia really isn’t doing his mental health any favors. One half of him wants to become a recluse and the other half wants Richie to just tweet out a picture of him so it’ll be over and done with and he won’t have to think about it anymore. He supposes keeping his identity hidden would be beneficial in the event that they break up and want to keep it private, but at this point Eddie can’t think of anything short of murder or soft blocking that would drive them apart. It seems like they’re in this for the long haul, which means Eddie will have to make some sacrifices.

There’s a knock on the door. Eddie smiles. It’s cute that Richie knocks to enter his own study. Myra never extended him such a courtesy.

“Come in!” Eddie calls.

The door opens and Richie pops his head in. “Hey, what’re you up to?” he asks.

“Googling my own name.”

“You better cut that shit out,” Richie says while walking towards the desk and leaning down to press a kiss to Eddie’s scalp. He groans in response and rubs at his eyes.

“God, why’d my great-grandfather’s name have to get butchered at Ellis Island? I’d fucking kill to be Edward Smith right now,” he complains, staring at the wall of links featuring his own name, all highlighted purple from past visits.

“Yeah, I know the feeling. Have you effectively managed to gone girl yourself?”

“There wasn’t much that needed to go. But hey, why do you think no one’s noticed me yet? I thought I’d be a household name by now.”

Richie steps back to sit on the queen-sized bed that’s maybe only two feet behind Eddie’s chair.

“From firsthand experience, I can tell you that nobody gives a shit about celebrity couples unless they’re both celebrities. You know my friend Allie who works at DirectTV? We've been hanging out for years and nobody ever gave a shit. But if I got coffee with someone with a blue checkmark suddenly we'd have our own hashtag. I’m not saying people won’t notice you; they probably just won’t care.”

Eddie turns to glare at him in mock offense, but honestly, that’s exactly what he needed to hear. It’s also comforting to know that Richie’s not just spinning empty words to give him peace of mind. Tons of Richie’s friends are actors and comedians who are in long-term relationships with normal day job people who remain nameless and never see any trouble. Maybe Eddie’s being self-absorbed for thinking he’d get special treatment.

“That’s actually really reassuring,” Eddie says before closing out his browser.

“Good. Is that why you’ve been working from home? Are you worried about people ambushing you?”

Eddie nods, although he feels stupid admitting it.

“I know I’m being paranoid, but this whole fucking town has eyes growing out of its ass.”

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

That’s the thing though, Eddie doesn’t want to get used to it. Obviously now’s not the right time to bring up the possibility of moving, but the thought of staying in LA permanently makes him want to vandalize some lawn ornaments. A couple years might be fine, but Eddie’s only been here four months and he’s already sick of it. He can’t put his finger on why he hates it so much, but something about the air just feels sick, and the smog isn’t the only culprit.

“I’m just so fucking paranoid someone’s going to come after me,” Eddie says while staring motionless at his monitor. Obviously he wants to dismiss his fears as wholly irrational, but after witnessing the events of the last four days, how could he? People are out of their fucking minds. Now he’s terrified that some stranger is going to burrow so deep into his past they’ll uncover some sordid secret Eddie didn’t even know he had, similar to that irrational fear of walking through airport security only to discover a knife in your pocket, despite the fact that you’ve never carried a knife in your life. For Eddie it’s in the same category of fear, but amplified by a couple place values.

“No one’s going to come after you,” Richie says confidently, then stands from the bed to firmly place his hands down on Eddie’s shoulders. “They only target people they think they can take something from, and it’s not like you’re going to get fired from your desk job because I told an incest joke. As long as you don’t verbally assault a service worker on camera you should be in the clear. And besides, what’s the point in targeting someone with no social media? Getting to yell at you directly is more than half the point.”

Eddie has to give him credit, he always knows exactly what to say to help him calm down. Objectively everything Richie’s saying makes perfect sense, but if being a hypochondriac has taught Eddie anything, it’s that certainty is never an option.

“I’m just scared someone’s going to start digging into me. What if they hack my email and find out I was single handedly responsible for the 2008 financial crisis?”

“I knew it,” Richie laughs, then leans down to kiss the crown of his head. He lingers there for a moment, giving his shoulders a firm squeeze.

“I’m sorry,” Richie whispers against his hair. “I know you didn’t sign up for any of this.”

“Yes I did. It’s not like we started dating while you were still waiting tables and selling weed. I knew what I was getting into.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”

Eddie sighs, then swivels his chair to face Richie, and grabs one of his hands along the way.

“There are worse compromises. Sorry if I get you cancelled for dating a guy who works for a Fortune 500.”

“That’s not getting me cancelled. You know what’s getting me cancelled?”

Richie’s smiling down at him with that stupid smirk he always puts on right before telling a really awful joke.

Eddie sighs in resignation. “What?”

Richie places both hands back on his shoulders.

“What do your mom and my mom have in common?”

“What?” Eddie replies, keeping his frown resilient.

“They both narrowly missed out on Roe v. Wade.”

Eddie stares into space for a moment, then the punchline clicks.

“Jesus,” he groans right before pressing his forehead into Richie’s chest.

“Pretty good, huh?” He sounds way too proud of himself.

“Wait, you’re wrong.” Eddie glares up at him. “Roe v. Wade was ’73.”

“What? I thought it was ’76.”

“Damn, what kind of two-bit feminist icon are you? But hey, I’ve got one. What do your dad and my dad have in common?”

“They both fucked my mom?” he answers without pause, and Eddie curses under his breath. His jokes might not be all that clever, but it’s infuriating how frequently Richie manages to guess the punchline.

“I saw that one coming three time zones away,” Richie laughs. “You better step it up.”

Then he takes Eddie’s obstinate face between his hands and leans down to press a self-satisfied kiss to his stubborn frown.


	7. Chapter 7

“So how was your last day as an adulterer?” Richie asks as Eddie’s tying his shoes by the door.

“Eh, it was alright. Too bad we didn’t get around to any adultering.”

“Yeah, it won’t hit the same after you get back.”

He looks down at Eddie’s grey carry-on, noticing that he removed the laminated tag with his name and contact information. Eddie’s also been wearing sunglasses whenever he goes out in public, which might be overkill, but Richie can’t fault him for it. His own days of relative anonymity ended a couple years back, but if they’re careful and play their cards right, Eddie should be able to scrape by unnoticed, never identified as anything more than ‘Richie Tozier’s partner.’ If that’s how Eddie wants it, Richie will do everything in his meager power to keep it that way.

“My Lyft’s almost here,” Eddie remarks, looking down at his phone.

“Then we have a minute or two,” Richie says before leaning in for a kiss.

Eddie meets him halfway, and they kiss with a gentle, comfortable familiarity. Eddie’s only going to be gone for a day, but it’s the longest they’ve been apart since Eddie moved in four months ago, and Richie’s going to be embarrassingly lonely sleeping on his own tonight.

How the fuck did he manage to survive without this for so long? This past week has objectively been one of the shittiest of his life, but he’s still far happier now than he was this time last year. He remembers when his friend Allie had her baby and spent months running on three hours of sleep and two-minute showers, but still insisted that being on maternity leave with her daughter was the happiest period of her life. At the time Richie figured she was partially saying that out of obligation, but now he understands her a bit better. When you love someone so absolutely, it steadies you like one of those giant weighted pendulums that hang in the center of skyscrapers.

They continue kissing, barely opening their mouths. Richie raises a hand to cradle his cheek and stroke his temple, trying to ignore the ticking time bomb that is the ride share app on Eddie’s phone. Richie pulls away for air, leans in again, but their lips barely touch before Eddie’s phone pings again, and they both pull away in disappointment.

“He’s here,” Eddie sighs, not bothering to look down at his screen.

“Better not keep him waiting,” Richie says before pressing a kiss to his forehead, where he whispers a quick, “I love you.”

“I love you too. See you tomorrow. Don’t have fun without me.”

“Not possible.” With that, he smiles, and gives Eddie’s cheek a pat, lingering over the fading scar that’s really only noticeable when he grows out his stubble.

Then Eddie picks up his suitcase and opens the door, giving Richie one last smile before stepping outside.

Once the door is closed Richie immediately moves to look out the window. He watches Eddie lift his suitcase into the trunk before getting in the backseat, feeling sort of like a dog watching his owner leave for work.

Once the car rolls out of sight, he turns back to the living room. Eddie was mildly distraught when he found out that Richie still has a lot of the same Ikea furniture he bought when he first moved to LA, some of which has already been through three or four assemblies. Richie gave him free license to redecorate however he liked, but Eddie got bogged down in work so quickly, and interior design really won’t be at the top of their agenda for a while, so for the time being it looks like they’re stuck with the decade-old lunnarp coffee table and grönlind couch.

Richie’s laptop is sitting on said lunnarp. Eddie reluctantly gave him back his passwords in case of an emergency, but he made Richie swear on their rapidly disappearing sex life that he wouldn’t check social media, or use the WiFi for anything other than ordering takeout and streaming Netflix, or maybe watching porn if things got really desperate, but considering that Richie’s been mainlining Xanax like a sixties housewife, it’ll be a miracle if he can get hard before next Christmas.

This is actually the longest he’s been offline in years, and to his surprise, he doesn’t really miss it. He thought he’d wind up craving it like a drug, but if anything, taking a break has been a relief. It’s also nice having confirmation that he is in fact strong enough to survive without getting tens of thousands of likes on Twitter per day. He’s been relying on a steady stream of digital validation for the better part of a decade now, and always feared that if he stopped posting then his meager self-esteem would run dry, and the withdrawal would drive him to seek a substitute. But so far, pulling back has been almost effortless. If he has a joke or funny anecdote he’ll just share it with Eddie, or post it in the group chat, and hey, he forgot how fucking nice it is to make jokes without worrying about getting death threats. And it turns out making the people you love laugh until they can’t breathe hits much harder than five thousand retweets.

He opens his laptop and orders enough Korean food for dinner and lunch tomorrow, even though he’s not sure how much he’ll actually be able to eat. The stress stomachaches have been coming and going, but it seems like they’ve more or less leveled out. But hey, with the week he’s had, he’s entitled to a handful of stress symptoms.

Within a period of seven days he came out, got cancelled, uncancelled, tangled up in a stupid-ass conspiracy, and now he might end up testifying against the man he fantasized about killing almost eighteen years ago.

He still hasn’t had a chance to sit down and properly untangle his messy, horrendously suppressed feelings on that whole can of worms. A decade ago he remembers opening Google and typing in “rape statute of limitations Illinois,” and feeling a heavy, but resigned disappointment when he read that it was only three years. Ever since then his memories have gotten fuzzier, and his feelings weaker. He used to hate Clark with the type of fury that made him want to snap his neck in broad daylight, but over the years he’s grown detached to the point where thinking back on what happened almost feels akin to mourning a long dead relative.

He won’t deny that he feels like a coward for refusing to go public, and after this most recent stunt, Clark deserves it, and so much worse. For years Richie was convinced that no one would believe him without any evidence, but right now, his word would _be_ the evidence. Everyone’s already itching to figure out why Clark tried to slander him so sloppily, and Richie’s story would complete the puzzle, no exhibits needed.

But every time he thinks about it, a searing sense of humiliation overwhelms all other considerations. If it were just one tweet over and done with maybe that’d be fine, but that’s not the reality. There’d be interviews, speeches, journalists asking him to recount the exquisite details all to be immortalized in his biography, and he doesn’t fucking want that. It took him almost three decades just to make peace with being gay, and the shame and guilt of that public revelation is still so raw it feels like a layer of pus coating his brain. And the thought of publicly confessing to being raped, and millions of people envisioning it, makes him feel like his skin is being stripped away and his body laid bare for public consumption.

He sighs, staring up at the ceiling fan spinning above his head.

If he’s officially called to testify, he’ll tell the truth. Legally there’s nothing he can do about what happened eighteen years ago, so he won’t put his privacy on the line unless there’s a good reason. It’s taken him nearly two decades to seal up that wound, and he doesn’t want to reopen it just for any satisfaction to be overshadowed by stress and scrutiny. And besides, Clark knows what he did, and he’s clearly freaked the fuck out that Richie will start talking, and letting him stew in that fear for the rest of his life is revenge enough.

The doorbell rings, causing him to jolt. He stares at the door nervously before remembering he ordered takeout. He retrieves it quickly and places the plastic bag down by his laptop and starts walking towards the kitchen to grab a soda, but before he makes it that far his phone starts ringing from the coffee table.

It’s Steve, which is a bad sign. Steve never calls unless it’s an emergency, otherwise he just texts. But then again, everything that’s happened within the last week would easily qualify as an emergency under normal circumstances.

He answers the call, silently begging the universe to stop putting him through the meat grinder and just let him enjoy his fucking dumplings.

“Hey, what’s up?” Richie answers, bracing for impact.

“Not much. Sorry, this is kind of urgent. And awkward.”

Well, that’s fucking ominous, but Richie supposes there are worse lead-ins. Urgent and awkward. Maybe it’s a leaked picture or something. Richie can’t remember the last time he let someone photograph him like that, but at least that scenario would have comedy potential.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Steve pauses for so long Richie worries the call might have fallen through. But then he hears Steve sigh, and the sound raises goosebumps up and down his arms. It reminds him of how his mom used to sigh whenever he asked her a simple question: Do we have any duct tape? Are these leftovers still good? Can you sign my permission slip? Each question answered with a sigh, but none as unsettling as Steve’s.

“Did you by any chance have an affair with Anthony Herring?”

Richie clenches his brow in confusion, even though there’s no one around to see it.

Well, that certainly came out of left field.

Anthony Herring? The actor in that sitcom he did a guest bit for? Jesus, is he fucking telling people about them? Sure, they messed around a bit, but calling it an affair seems a bit sensational.

“Um, no.”

Steve lets out a sigh of relief. “Awesome, that’s great. Sorry, there’s this piece of shit article saying you guys had an affair last summer while you were shooting that guest part for House Rules, but we can put out a statement saying it’s all bullshit.”

A cold sweat breaks over Richie’s body.

“Wait, um, we didn’t have an affair per se, but we did hook up a few times.”

Steve goes silent. It’s obvious that’s not the answer he wanted to hear.

“Define ‘hooked up,’” he says, causing Richie’s anxiety to spike and spill onto the floor.

“You want the gory details?” he asks with a nervous laugh.

“Please,” Steve replies without a hint of humor. Yet there’s no anger in his voice, just resignation.

Richie swallows.

“We fooled around twice in his trailer and shared a hotel room that night we spent in Ventura for shooting. That’s it.”

“So just those three times?”

“Yes,” he says firmly. If Steve doesn’t believe him there’s nothing more he can say.

“Have you had any contact since then?”

“Jesus, how bad is the fucking article?”

Richie’s right leg starts shaking uncontrollably. His cheek is sweating where it’s pressed against the screen of his phone. Please, just pull off the band-aid.

“Okay, I’m going to email you a link. Just please don’t freak out.”

Richie lets out a nervous laugh. _Please don’t freak out._ Immortal last words.

Richie leans forward to open his email. There’s nothing from Steve sitting at the top of his inbox, so he refreshes it. Still nothing. He refreshes again. This time there’s a new message: no subject, no text, just a link comprised of random numbers and letters. He can hear Steve breathing on the other end.

He clicks the link, and the headline reads, 

_Actor Anthony Herring Arrested for Domestic Assault_

Richie lets out an involuntary laugh. This is just too fucking good.

_“House Rules” actor Anthony Herring, 37, was arrested Sunday night on domestic assault charges. Police were called to the actor’s home around 11:15 p.m. after Herring’s wife, “Ring Around” actress Jessica Carmichael, called 911._

_She was taken to the hospital while Herring was taken into custody. He now faces charges of attempted murder, strangulation, harassment, and interfering with a police officer._

_Investigators said statements by the victim, as well as injuries sustained, determined there was probable cause to arrest Herring._

The article continues on for several more paragraphs, detailing Herring’s extensive history of allegations, statements from past partners, anecdotes from fellow cast members, each sentence reaching into Richie’s stomach and carving out an inch of his intestines.

Then he arrives at the single sentence bearing his name, and it fills him with an urge to bring his head down hard against the wooden table at his knees.

_Herring allegedly had an affair with comedian Richie Tozier in July, 2016 while Tozier was filming a guest role for “House Rules.”_

The article continues for several more paragraphs, but that’s where he stops.

He feels the phantom impression of a hand circling his throat and squeezing tight.

“Rich, did you know about any of this when you hooked up?” Steve asks, practically begging him to deny the story altogether.

“No, I swear I didn’t know. I never even met the guy before I got on set. I mean, sure, I knew he was an asshole, but who around here isn’t? I didn’t know he was fucking beating his wife!”

Richie’s armpits are now soaked in sweat. His vision is refusing to focus. Shit, why does this keep happening? Over and over again, same story, different anecdotes, identical mistakes.

“Did you know he was engaged?” Steve asks cautiously.

Richie actually sneers in anger.

“No, he didn’t fucking tell me! We had like two scenes together. I swear I didn’t know. There are a hundred thousand actors in LA. I don’t keep tabs on all their personal shit!”

Richie’s not sure if Steve believes him, but it’s the truth. Before they did anything Richie straight up asked him if he was seeing anyone, and Anthony looked him in the eyes and said he and his girlfriend were “taking some time apart.” Richie figured he might have been lying, but if he was, then that was his fucking business, and Richie wasn’t going to run a background check on every guy he casually hooked up with.

Richie’s chest is starting to burn with a familiar pain over his heart. He can’t keep doing this. It’s going to kill him. He’s going to die of a heart attack at forty-one over some stupid tabloid bullshit. Forget growing thicker skin; he slept with a man who tried to kill his wife. He needs to peel off every inch of skin and regrow it from scratch.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Steve says calmly, probably sensing Richie’s mounting panic. “We’ll just tell the truth. You barely had any contact and you didn’t know anything about him beforehand.”

“No one will fucking believe me. You know they won’t.” Richie’s having a hard time breathing now.

“Is there any way we can spin this? Did he coerce you or anything?”

“No.”

Richie doesn’t even need a second to think it over. He wishes he could say yes. He wishes he could say he was threatened or blackmailed or some shit, but the reality is that Anthony Herring is a c-list nobody who got written out of the last season for being a piece of shit on set. He didn’t have the power to dent Richie’s career even if he tried, so no, Richie has no excuse. This was just another mistake in a long line of fuck ups, and now the check is sitting on the table.

He was drawn to people with shitty personalities, and in turn, they were drawn to him. It felt safer sleeping with people when there was no danger of developing feelings. He could get what he needed in the short-term and not have to worry about being tempted back for more. Besides, nice people are often riskier, especially in this industry. Nice people know how to use kindness to get what they want. They know what to say, how to act, how to draw you in and gain your trust. In Richie’s experience, the nicest people are often the ones with the worst intentions, but with shitty people at least he knows what to expect; they're trustworthy in their transparency.

But the people he slept with weren't necessarily bad. Most were just unlikeable. They were demanding, annoying, selfish, spoiled, but not evil. Or at least he didn’t think so. That’s what he thought about Anthony, but hell, how many others were exactly like him?

Steve’s voice breaks through the static in his head. “Okay, that’s alright, this isn’t a big deal. Let’s just tweet out a statement right now. Can you do that, Rich?”

Richie feels sick. Fuck, he wants nothing more than to call the article bullshit, but what if someone has proof? What if there are pictures? He can’t get caught in a lie like that.

Shit, what if Clark’s the one orchestrating all of this? What if he’s been keeping tabs on Richie this entire time? Eighteen fucking years worth of mistakes. What if this is just the beginning? He’ll expose a new secret every day, drop by drop it’ll drain out like sewage, all his dirty little secrets dripping into the gutter.

“Do I have to?” he begs. This isn’t like apologizing for a joke he said in a crowded theater; this is what he does behind closed doors when he’s at his very worst.

“Come on, it won’t be so bad. Do you have Twitter open?”

“Yeah,” Richie replies, looking down at his laptop and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s awful, but the longer we leave this hanging the crazier the rumors will get. This won’t hurt your career. I promise.”

Richie wants to scream that he doesn’t give a shit about his fucking career. He has a right to his secrets just like everybody else. The right to judge himself in the lonely, hollow chamber of his head where at least no one else can touch him.

“Okay, just type this out.”

Richie nods for nobody.

“Okay, here it is. ‘I only had three brief encounters with Anthony Herring over the course of one week. We were not having an affair and I was not privy to any information regarding his personal life. I’m sorry…” Steve trails off, and Richie’s fingers go still.

_I’m sorry._

What exactly is he apologizing for? The only person who might deserve an apology in this scenario is Anthony’s wife, so why the fuck is he saying it to the entire world?

“How 'bout you just say, ‘I regret my involvement with him and do not condone any of his reprehensible words or actions.’ Does that fit?”

Richie finishes typing. There are six characters to spare.

“Yeah,” he sobs.

He can’t fucking do this. Please don’t make him do this.

“Okay, just press the button. It’ll be fine. Nobody will care a day from now.”

No, they might not care, but they’ll remember. Just because people stop tweeting about it doesn’t mean it just disappears from collective memory. They’ll think about it every time they see him. Whether he’s onstage or onscreen, they’ll envision him on his knees sucking off an attempted murderer. That’s how he’ll exist in the minds of strangers.

But that’s already how they see him. It’s too late to salvage anything.

He clicks the button, then hangs up without saying goodbye.

He calls Eddie, and it rings with no answer. He tries again with the same result. Then he looks up Eddie’s flight, and confirms that it took off seven minutes ago, and won’t land for another five hours.

The next thing Richie does is redownload an app he deleted months ago. It’s an alcohol delivery app, one he’s given a lot of business over the years. This is a terrible idea, but fuck it, Eddie's gone and he needs to get himself under control. Keeping himself calm is the priority, by whatever means necessary. He needs to be out of commission, or he might do something stupid. Eddie will understand. He doesn't even have to know.

After ordering a bottle of bourbon he stares at his home screen, deceptively quiet with all his notifications muted.

He shouldn’t look. He knows he shouldn’t fucking look. But of course he does.

_So you just tripped and fell and accidentally had sex with a neo-nazi? Three times? What’s the old saying about how if there’s 1 nazi at a table with 9 other people then you’ve got 10 nazis?_

_This reflects a larger trend in Hollywood where powerful people are showered with praise for not being abusive themselves, but are complicit in the abuse perpetuated by their friends and colleagues. We need to hold the protectors to a standard just as high as the abusers_

_It’s so disgusting how you saw this story about a woman being brutalized and your only thought was to defend yourself without giving her a word of sympathy. Fucking disgusting_

_I’m glad to know you got out of your “encounters” alive and well. Congrats. Good job. Don’t choke on all that privilege_

_In case anyone's wondering, anthony herring and jessica carmichael got engaged in february of last year, and yes it was very much public knowledge. Like unavoidably public_

_Every time a celebrity does something shitty my favorite part is when all their coworkers come out of the woodwork to say how shocked and surprised they are. It's so convincing every time_

_Oh my god it's not a big deal! We’ve all fucked people we shouldn’t have but this denial is just pathetic. Nobody cares_

_Anthony Herring wasn’t just some random guy on grindr. He has an extensive and well-documented history of systemic abuse. Ignoring all that for the sake of sex is a slap in the face to every woman who stood up for you_

_Someone tell Richie Tozier google is free_

_For reference July of last year is when Jessica Carmichael was almost hospitalized for suicidal ideation. She wrote a instagram post about it. Even if he didn’t know about all that it’s still like, not the best look_

_Women live in constant fear of men like Herring. That’s why we vet them, photograph their license plates, and let our friends know when we go on dates. Sleeping with someone with a violent history of domestic abuse without even being aware of it speaks to a level of privilege we could only dream of_

_It's funny how Richie Tozier didn't denounce him after he got fired from the show for physically assaulting a makeup artist. I'm sure she would've appreciated the support. but men only know how to play defense_

_Fuck you that woman is in the ICU! At least three other people were victimized. And all you care about is distancing yourself from him so you don’t get cancelled again? Are you actually evil?_

Richie barely makes it to the kitchen sink before throwing up.

It sits on top of the dirty dishes, dripping between the cracks. Once the dry heaving comes to an end, he wipes off his chin and sinks to the floor.

Who did he hurt? He’s confused. If the story hadn’t been leaked, then who the fuck would have been hurt by it? He just found out he was naked and intimate with a man who tried to kill someone, and now the entire world knows and is judging him for it. Do any of them give a shit about how much that’s fucking him up? No, of course they don’t. They don’t care about him. They never have, and never will.

How could he be so fucking naïve as to how the game works? It never crossed his mind for a second that simply sleeping with someone was enough to put him in the line of fire. He anticipated an old hookup or two coming forward, but figured they’d just leaked some invasive details and the story would be over and done with. He never foresaw anything like this. A warped reality where he was a bad person just for sleeping with bad people. Fuck, if that’s true, then every freak in Hollywood belongs in fucking hell.

If they’re the ones making up the rules, then it’s impossible for him to win. If he insists he didn’t know, they’ll call him a liar. If he defends himself, they’ll call him complicit. What other options does he have? Should he chronicle his long and brutally intimate history with fucked up people? Tweet out screenshots of his psychiatric records? Does he have to make a podcast describing every traumatic incident of his life just to prove to these strangers that he’s not evil? Is that the least they’re willing to settle for?

He knows it wouldn’t work though. He's seen others before him try, and it never works. And the worst part is he knew this would happen. The second a crack appeared in his armor he knew they would rip it into a chasm. They're all so fucking predictable.

He lowers his head to the floor, already dizzy from the stench building in the sink.

All he did was tell some jokes. He told some jokes and slept with some bad people. Is that really enough to deserve all this? He never treated anybody in real life like they were less than his equal. Yeah, he fucked up sometimes, but he never whined about censorship or claimed to be oppressed. He's long since moved past trying to be controversial just for the fuck of it. Off the top of his head he could list twenty comedians just in his contact list with material far more contentious than his own who've never gotten a fraction of the backlash. He also knows plenty of comics who brand themselves as squeaky clean liberal darlings who treat people like absolute shit behind closed doors.

But Richie tries his best to be a decent person. Not a saint, not perfect, but decent enough to sleep at night. Are there things he regrets? Of course there fucking are. There’s no shortage of shit he said five, ten, fifteen years ago that he wouldn’t repeat today even if you paid him. There’ve been hundreds of occasions where something stupid came out of his mouth and he instantly knew he’d never repeat those same words again. There are things he used to say and think that he’s too ashamed to ever confess, even to Eddie, who already dealt with the worst of it during high school.

But that was just fucking life. Everybody has that story. Why are they pretending like he’s the exception?

The doorbell rings, and a few seconds later his phone vibrates, notifying him that his order has arrived. He texts the guy to tell him to leave it on the doorstep, and after Richie’s sure he's gone, he grabs the bottle, shuts the door, and takes a long, lukewarm gulp that almost makes him gag. Then he goes back to the couch and starts rolling a joint, his hands shaking as he tries to get the weed to stay in the paper.

This is what he’ll do: he’ll get high, take a Xanax, drink his bourbon, pass out, and maybe by the time he wakes up there will be some new controversy he doesn’t have to concern himself with. Some other miserable bastard in another part of the valley getting his ass handed to him over a bad tweet.

He needs to maintain some perspective. This is just a blip, it’s a nothing story. No one actually cares. It's just two hundred people with nothing better to do. It’s stupid gossipy bullshit. Just ride it out. Good people sleep with bad people all the time. It’s not illegal.

And he’s not a bad person. He has to believe that. If he were a bad person, then what would be the point in living? He thinks back to all the clever insults his classmates used to throw at him. Why did they bother putting in so much effort? All they had to do was look him in the eye and tell him he was a bad person. That’s all it would have taken. Didn’t matter who said it. “Richie Tozier, you’re a bad person.” Six words, and he would have gone into the woods and killed himself. There were plenty of days where that’s the only push he needed.

His phone starts ringing. It’s Steve again.

“Hello?”

“Rich, don’t go online right now.”

Richie’s brain turns to ice.

“What happened?”

“Nothing, it’s fine. Just please don’t go online right now. Is Eddie there?”

“He’s on a flight.”

“Okay, why don’t you invite a friend over or something?”

Richie hangs up. His fingers guide him to Twitter with barely any sensation.

His name is trending, and when he clicks the tab the top result is a grainy video with a timestamp from December 3, 1999. 

It’s a video of him standing on a small stage, barely more than a shoddy platform made of construction pallets. The lights are dim. In one hand he’s holding a mic and with the other he’s fiddling with his mangled hair.

_“You know that old joke about how only nine out of ten people enjoy gang rape? Well, I’m not a nine out of ten, so I guess I’m the odd one out. But from a logistical standpoint, rape really isn’t that different from regular sex, right? The only difference is you want the other person to finish quickly, but when they don’t, you’re somehow even more disappointed. I mean, this is their fantasy. If someone wants to fuck you so bad they’re willing to go to prison for it, then it really shouldn’t take longer than peeling a straw, and if it does, then sorry, that means you’re the problem._

That’s only the first minute, and from there it only gets worse. He pauses the video, too scared to watch a second more. He can’t remember everything he said, but he knows it’s worse than anything he’s performed since.

Rape jokes, beginning to end. The worst night of his life.

This is a nightmare. It has to be.

Please, this can’t be fucking real. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SERIOUS WARNING FOR SUICIDE ATTEMPT/SUICIDAL IDEATION

Richie can’t remember how old he was when it first dawned on him that ignoring your kid for days at a time wasn’t just “latchkey parenting.” Richie always knew his parents weren’t perfect, but they were fine, at least compared to what his friends had to deal with. His parents let him stay out and do whatever shit he wanted. He could stay up until 3:00 a.m. watching TV. They never made him do any chores, and just hired a maid who came once a week to do the laundry and clean the dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Sure, occasionally he’d hear them yelling in their room, but they never yelled at _him_. They never got on his case over stupid shit. There were kids at school who got beaten over their report cards, but Richie’s parents never even checked his. As a teenager he’d listen to the complaints of his friends and feel guilty for how good he had it.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

7,490 Tweets

He keeps forgetting to breathe. He feels like he’s in a lucid dream. He stands up, sits back down, fifty more tweets appear. He blinks, and for a split second there are bugs crawling across his screen.

In high school his first boyfriend was a twenty-three-year-old bartender in Bangor. At the end of every visit he always gave Richie a bottle or two of liquor to take home, as he got more of it from the bar for free than he could ever drink. Richie always guiltily accepted it, even though it sat heavy in his gut like a piece of bad meat.

When they first met Richie said he was eighteen and had just been held back a year. If anyone found out he was lying the man could get in serious trouble; he could go to prison, and it’d be all Richie’s fault. That’s why no one could find out. Not ever. He was such an amazing guy, and Richie was just this stupid high schooler wasting his time. He was so ashamed and disgusted with himself that he didn’t even properly break up with him. After leaving Derry he dropped all contact, and hoped the guy would understand that he was better off without him.

Several years later Richie drunkenly confessed all this to another bartender, who went still, and gently informed him that bartenders never got to take home free liquor. That wasn’t a thing, and never had been.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

10,311 Tweets

He can’t tell if his hearing is still working. Everything’s too quiet. He raises a hand to snap by his ear, but it sounds fake. Like hearing someone snap in a movie.

He met his second boyfriend on the train to Chicago. They were sitting side by side, and the man listened attentively as Richie rambled on about how he didn’t need a fucking degree. His parents were pieces of shit anyway. And so what if he only had a couple hundred bucks? He’d figure something out. Richie padded out his story, heightened the dramatics, and when the man asked if he needed a place to stay for the night, Richie quickly accepted the offer, as if that wasn’t his plan all along.

One night turned into a week, and then a month, and the longer he stayed, the guiltier he felt. He didn’t even have the decency to get some minimum wage job to help pay the bills. Instead he spent his days lying around the man’s apartment, eating his food, drinking his beer, sleeping in his bed. He wasn’t naive. He knew the exchange went both ways, and the man wasn’t going to kick him out unless Richie gave him a very good reason.

That’s why he didn’t complain when the man started resting his hand on his neck. It was just teasing at first, little to no pressure. Light squeezes during sex, or simply resting it there while watching TV. Occasionally he’d leave light bruises, but that was normal. The kids at school used to show off their hickies like fashion statements. And yeah, it made Richie nervous when he started keeping his hand there from start to finish, and if Richie made any sound he’d squeeze tighter, and tighter. Doesn’t the adrenaline feel nice?

God, Richie was such a stupid kid. An unforgivably stupid little kid.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

16,012 Tweets

His phone starts ringing. It rings and rings and doesn’t stop. One call will end and another will take its place. The texts from his friends cascade down the screen. He wants to reply, but it feels like they’re trying to reach a different person.

At twenty he still got mistaken for a teenager, but at twenty-three he doesn’t even get carded anymore. He’s glad there are no pictures of him from that period. He doesn’t want to see the evidence of how gracelessly he aged.

In the morning he spikes his coffee with cheap whiskey. Sometimes he’ll skip breakfast so he can actually get a small buzz out of it. Then he knocks back two Aspirins, pours several shots of vodka into his water bottle, and if he’s having a good day, he might actually make it out the door. He feels gross drinking at work, but if he tries to go in sober the withdrawal will usually hit him right around 2:00, and he’s more use to them slightly buzzed than doubled over in a supply closet.

His record for holding down a job is five months, and that was much longer than he deserved. Standup doesn’t make him any money apart from train fare, but he likes it because he gets to lie. Well, it’s not technically lying, at least not any more than an actor getting on stage and reading his lines. It’s fun. Every weekend he gets to play an alternate version of himself: one who sleeps with women, has entertaining friends, wacky but lovable parents, a version of himself that was flawed, but in a fun way. A version that held down jobs, drank just for the fun of it, and had John Hughes-style adventures through the streets of Chicago.

He knows it’s impossible for him to become that perfect version of himself, but if he tried, he could probably get closer. If he just stopped drinking, stopped being lazy, stopped fucking up at work, stopped dwelling on shit he couldn’t change, if he just got his shit together then he wouldn’t have to get onstage and tell so many goddamn lies.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

29,445

This happens all the time. People go through this every day. This is normal. He asked for this, so he can’t complain. His career won’t suffer, so it doesn’t matter. That’s what they’re telling him. It doesn’t matter. The bottle’s a third empty now. His hands are numb, and it runs down his chest as he tries to drink.

His roommate disappeared two months ago, and took the toaster and phone with him. The lease is under Richie’s name though, so he’s hooked for every cent of the rent. He’s down to his last few dollars. He needs to find someone soon, but who the fuck wants to split a studio apartment with a deadbeat alcoholic? Yeah, a fucking studio. Richie sleeps in the closet, something he’d joke about if he ever found the courage to admit he’s touched other men.

He’s probably seven shots deep on an empty stomach before remembering he has a show that night. He stumbles down the stairs and makes it to the train just as the doors are closing. Then he stares out the window, looking over the rooftops of Chicago, the flimsy fire escapes and boarded up factories, and things start to feel a little better. Everyone in this city was struggling. Everyone in life was struggling. He needs to stop feeling so sorry for himself. Tonight he’ll do this set, earn a couple tips, eat some french fries, and tomorrow he’ll start looking for a roommate and a new job. Things will work out. He’ll be okay.

He coughs and tastes blood. That’s been happening a lot recently. The train takes a smooth turn that almost sends him to the floor. No one else will sit near him. After all this time how is he still capable of feeling so much shame?

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

46,567

The screaming starts inside his head. Every word on the screen, he hears it before he can even process reading it. _You deserve to die. You deserve to die. You deserve to die._ He could kill himself right now, and no one would care. They'd either be happy, or indifferent, but no one would grieve for him. He'd trend for half a day, then disappear.

He’s grateful that his roommate left behind his mattress. It’s much nicer than his sleeping bag, and it helps with the pain. He lies on his side, contorting his body, trying to find the angle that will make the pain disappear. It hurts when he bends his knees the wrong way. He stopped eating because there was blood in his shit.

He rations his liquor, but still runs out after three days, and the withdrawal effects set in quick. A headache that squeezes his temples, rendering his brain a dried-out husk. The hunger and nausea are conjoined twins fighting to the death inside his stomach. His TV is a hand me down of a hand me down, and he lies there watching staticky reruns of Friends and Seinfeld. Anger, numbness, crying, crying till he can’t breathe, cold, hot, it starts snowing outside his window.

The jokes come easy, and they’re his only respite. He scribbles them down in his notebook with small bursts of energy, covering page after page with half a punchline, a vague set up, a thread, a detail. The notebook has wide lines that were probably designed for a kid, and now they’re home to the nastiest jokes he’s ever written, and the bitter irony is that some of them are actually pretty funny.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

63,102

He looks at the stairs and envisions his body hanging from the bannister. He slaps himself hard across the face. Stop it, you piece of shit. Stop it. Everything was fine two hours ago, and it’ll be fine again. There’s a way out. He just has to tell the truth, and all of this will go away.

The rent is four days late. He’s scared that every shuffle in the hallway is his landlord coming to kick him out. His roommate left behind a box of Benadryl and some Tylenol, and Richie still has a couple tablets of Aspirin. He lies there in a panic, looking around the claustrophobic white block of his apartment as the thought of waking up tomorrow grows more and more unbearable. He tries to tell himself it’s just the withdrawal. If he can just get something to drink then he’ll start to calm down. It’ll suppress the nightmares, and he can figure out what he needs to do next. The cheapest bottle of liquor down at the bodega is $4.73 plus tax. He has the prices memorized. He’s very good at budgeting. He counts all the change in his apartment and comes up with $3.11. All he needs is $1.62 more. He can do that; he can go down to the bar four blocks from here where he first started doing open mics. All he needs is $1.62 in tips, then he can buy his vodka, come back home, lie down, and not have to worry for a little while longer.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

97,196

He wraps a hand around his throat and squeezes. Both hands, harder; he can still breathe. Harder.

He doesn’t really remember walking out of the bar, or walking in. He didn’t make any tips. He was hoping someone might ask him if he was okay. If he needed any help. But they were silent, staring, begging him to leave. 

The next thing he remembers is the lightbulb flickering above the payphone a block from his apartment, the wind and snow biting at his ears and shooting down his throat. He should call his parents, right? The last time he called them the temperature was in the eighties, and they chatted about the weather until his mom said she needed to go lie down.

He puts in a quarter, and the phone rings and rings. _Hi, you’ve reached Wentworth and Maggie Tozier, please leave– He_ hangs up and tries again, and again, banging the phone into the cradle with each failed attempt. Finally he’s down to his last quarter, so he dutifully leaves a message.

“Hi mom. Hi dad. It’s me. Just wanted to call and say I’m okay. I’m good. I’m um, I’m…” 

He starts crying and doesn’t stop until the meter runs out. It’s a cruel tactic and he knows it. Now their last memory of him will be overshadowed with guilt. They’ll be haunted by the certainty that if they’d just answered, then he would’ve been alright.

As a kid he was always terrified of going missing, but that’s exactly what happened. He disappeared, and no one came looking for him. That was his greatest fear. Not that he would go missing, but that everyone would forget him.

Well, they did. They forgot him, and he didn’t even notice.

Trending in the United States

Richie Tozier

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[Incoming Call: Bev]

[Incoming Call: Bill]

[Incoming Call: Mike]

[Incoming Call: Ben]

Intentions don’t matter, only actions. That’s what he learned as a kid, and it’s why he won’t be remembered as a good person. He’ll just be remembered as that piece of shit who never showed up for work. That drunk on the train who swayed with every turn. The asshole who showed up late for every show and spat out the worst jokes in the line up. The son who guilted his parents as his final goodbye. That’s how he’ll be remembered. That’s the mark he’s leaving on the world.

He wanted to be a kind person. Kind and nice: words that children use to describe themselves. He wishes he could’ve made the world just a little bit better, but he won’t be remembered for the things he wanted, he’ll be remembered for the things he did. No one will stand above his casket and talk about how generous he was. How selfless, how considerate, no, that version of himself was just as much a fantasy as the alter ego he built onstage. Actually, it was even more false because it didn’t even exist outside his own head. Any illusion of goodness would die with him. It never even existed.

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Richie Tozier

152,837

173,333

190,556

214,224

249,005

…

  
  
  


_I did that set shortly after being raped by my agent. That’s also the night I tried to kill myself_

_Five days earlier I showed up too drunk to go on stage. My agent said he’d drop me if I didn’t do what he said_

_He took me backstage to a dressing room. He dropped me as a client anyway_

_I didn’t have enough for rent that month. I was going through withdrawal. I don’t remember much_

_I took whatever pills I had. My landlord found me the next day and somehow I was still alive_

_I swear I’m not lying. I can show you the hospital records. It took me fourteen years to pay off the debt_

_I’m sorry for saying those things. I know I’ll never be good enough. I’m sorry. Bye._

@richietozier does not exist

Please tap to retry

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Seconds after switching out of airplane mode Eddie’s phone vibrates in his palm and layers of texts cascade down his screen.

_Bev: Have any of you been able to reach Richie?_

_Ben: No I’ve been trying_

_Mike: Me too_

_Mike: Eddie are you with him?_

_Bill: I think Eddie’s on a flight to New York. I’m not sure when he lands_

_Mike: So Richie’s alone?!_

_Bill: I’m driving to his place right now_

_Ben: Do you think he turned off his phone?_

_Bill: Maybe I wouldn’t blame him_

_Ben: Should we call 911 just to be safe?_

_Bill: I’m almost there. I’ll probably get there fatter than an ambulance_

_Bill: Sorry faster. Voice to text_

_Mike: Let us know as soon as you get there_

_Bill: I will_

_Bev: Richie if you’re reading this and just not responding please know we all love you and it’ll be okay_

_Mike: Yeah don’t worry no one online is mad at you. They’re all really worried_

_Ben: Anything you need. We’ll all fly out tomorrow if we need to_

_Mike: Yeah seriously anything_

_Bill: I just got here. He’s fine. His manager called an ambulance but he said he only took two doses of xanax. He’s pretty drunk though. The EMTs said to keep an eye on him. We’re going back to my place just to be safe_

_Mike: Thank god he’s okay. Can we do anything for him?_

_Bill: I don’t know_

_Bill: I don’t think he wants to talk right now_

_Bill: He’s pretty out of it_

_Bill: Eddie when you land please call me. Don’t call him. I don’t think he wants to be on his phone right now_

By the time Eddie finishes reading the backlog they’re still waiting on the tarmac.

He reads the texts again just to calm himself down, similar to how rereading a horror story can offer a sense of comfort since the suspense no longer holds any power. Bill’s last text was sent over three hours ago, which means Eddie knows how the story ends. No matter what terrible thing happened, Richie’s okay. He’s alive, and safe, and he’ll answer when Eddie calls.

There’s a subtle sense of deja vu from when his mom died. It was expected, even overdue, but you never expect it to happen that very day. He remembers opening his eyes two hours ahead of his alarm, rolling over to check his phone, and seeing three missed calls from the hospital. He stared at the notifications for a few seconds, then closed his eyes, and resolved to deal with them once his alarm went off.

Eddie reads the texts again, searching for clues, trying to infer what could have happened. The earliest texts in the group chat were sent less than half an hour after his plane took off. What could have possibly happened in that short window between getting in the Lyft and withdrawing from the jet bridge that would drive Steve to call an ambulance and have all their friends frantically suggesting the same?

He stares out the window at the dark sky, all the stars obscured by the light of the city. Then he closes his eyes, savoring these moments of ignorance. They’re still taxiing to their gate. The wheels of the plane seem to be crawling along in mockery of its two hundred-odd captives. Everyone’s getting impatient, but Eddie wishes they could circle the terminal for another hour. Let him be a coward for a little while longer.

Finally his curiosity gets the best of him. He unlocks his phone and opens Twitter, then reluctantly types in Richie’s name, lingering over each letter, reminiscent of watching a horror movie through his fingers. With morbid reluctance he presses the search button, and the top result is a press release from Richie’s management:

_Thank you everyone for your words of concern. Richie Tozier is currently alive and well and in the company of good friends. He would appreciate privacy during this time and will not be responding to any inquiries. His account will remain deactivated for the time being._

Eddie presses the home button, too scared to scroll any further. He still doesn’t have any answers, but he can’t stand the thought of trying to piece together the events of the last few hours through the fragmented tweets of strangers. Instead he punches Richie’s name into Google, and the first result is a news article recapping everything Eddie missed while seven miles in the air.

The article is short, clearly written in a hurry, but each succinct sentence feels like a punch to his throat. It could be worse; it could always be worse, but god, they screencapped Richie’s final tweets before he deactivated, and Eddie’s so fucking thankful he didn’t have to read them before getting confirmation that Richie’s alive and safe. But now he’s so far away. Of course Eddie knows that even if he were there in person there’s nothing he could have done to stop it. The damage was beyond his control, and he’s never felt so fucking useless in his life.

Finally the plane reaches the jet bridge, and after deboarding Eddie anxiously scans the area in search of someplace private. Eventually he finds a small nook under a stairwell where he takes out his phone to call Bill. His throat has been clenching painfully with the need to cry, and as soon as he hears Richie’s voice his eyes start burning and the tears run down his cheeks.

 _“I should’ve just lied,”_ Richie sobs. _“It was eighteen fucking years ago. No one actually cared. I should’ve just lied and said I was drunk and apologized.”_

Eddie presses a hand over his mouth, trying to stifle the sobs pulsing in his chest. It’s 2:00 a.m. and the terminal is practically deserted, but a few people still shoot him worried glances while passing by. His flight back to LA is in thirteen hours, and there’s no point trying to book anything sooner. All he can do is tell Richie that everything will be okay. He’ll be home soon, and everything will be alright.

Eddie manages to resist looking at his phone for the duration of the ride to his hotel. Instead he stares out the window, his eyes following the unending line of rooftops visible from the elevated highway, watching the buildings steadily grow taller as they drive deeper into Brooklyn.

Once he’s alone in his hotel room his restraint collapses. He pulls off his sweaty clothes, climbs onto the overstuffed bed, and scrolls through Twitter until his brain retreats into defensive numbness.

The one piece of good news is that Clark wasn’t responsible for either the article about Anthony or the bootleg. It turns out Anthony vindictively told another cast member about their relationship, and that person unwittingly conveyed it to the journalist who contacted him for comment following Anthony’s arrest.

The bootleg was a bit more complicated. It was filmed by a forty-five-year-old data analyst in Milwaukee. She was there that night at the bar eighteen years ago. Her boyfriend had asked her to film his tight five routine for a demo reel, but he ended up flubbing and the tape was unusable. They broke up shortly thereafter, but the tape sat in her basement for nearly two decades, untouched and forgotten until Richie’s name started appearing in the national news, at which point his face and voice began to ring familiar.

She removed the video after Richie deactivated, but obviously the clones were still circulating. When asked why she uploaded it, she said she felt that “people had a right to know.” Because how could society continue to function if every person on planet earth didn’t know about a five-minute routine Richie did eighteen years ago in front of a crowd small enough to fit inside a utility closet? Obviously the sun would have fallen into the fucking ocean.

Eddie wants to lie to Richie so badly. He wants to tell him that everyone’s tripping over themselves to apologize, but of course that’s not true. The tweets of six hours ago have long since been buried. Eddie’s not sure how far he would have to scroll to find them, but that’s probably for the best. Eddie doesn’t have any proof, but if he had to guess, he’d say far more tweets were deleted than apologies issued. The only apologies he’s able to find are from public figures who couldn’t afford the bad press, but even those were circuitous and indirect. One guy said he didn’t feel comfortable apologizing for his criticism of the video because he felt it would be disrespectful to victims of sexual assault, which begs the question of what the fuck he thinks Richie is.

But for the most part, Richie was no longer a part of the conversation. In his silence the world kept moving. Now everyone was tweeting out their personal anecdotes, circulating resources, and generally patting themselves on the back for having the courage to discuss such sensitive issues, and the fact that they collectively showered a rape survivor with hundreds if not thousands of death threats was just an unfortunate speck of collateral damage, insignificant in the broader scheme of things. The unspoken sentiment seemed to be, ‘Well, he didn’t kill himself, so it couldn’t have been that bad.’

Occasionally Eddie will come across tweets expressing sympathy for what Richie was subjected to, but they’re almost always framed with disdain and loathing for the other side. Currently Richie’s biggest fanboys are the libertarian culture criers eager to turn him into a martyr for leftist cannibalism. Obviously none of them give a shit about rape or Richie himself, but this chess move was just too perfect for them to ignore, which naturally meant that no one on the left could speak up for him without fear of being branded a far-right sympathizer, or something far worse. Agendas on top of agendas, one layer of viral tweets buried beneath another, the conversation tinged with this sick undercurrent of frustration towards Richie for making things so damn complicated.

Would the reaction have been any different if he _had_ killed himself? Probably not. The way people spoke of him made it clear that he was nothing more than a prop, like a controversial toy line or a building without handicap ramps: an inanimate object that could be criticized, dissected, and dismantled without suffering any actual harm.

Then Eddie sees something that instantly snaps him into a state of violent rage: two tweets from a female comic and a friend of Richie’s.

_This is obviously a very distressing video, and I truly believe this isn’t who Richie is anymore, but I do think it’s important to take responsibility for past mistakes and apologize for the people we’ve hurt._

She tweeted again seventeen minutes later.

_I apologize for jumping to conclusions so quickly. If anything this shows that we need to view situations with greater nuance and empathy, and extend people support and understanding wherever we can._

That’s the only tweet Eddie writes a reply to.

_fucking cunt_

He wishes he could scream it to her face. She wasn’t some random person lashing out at an abstract celebrity. Richie was her fucking friend. He opened for her; he was her plus-one at a wedding. She could have texted him to ask for an explanation, or just kept her mouth shut, but no, she just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let the world know what a good fucking person she was. If any of the other Losers had done the same Eddie would have cut them off point blank, no excuses accepted.

Then Eddie sees it: the tweet that throttles any hope he had left.

_This may be a controversial opinion, but if this is what it took to finally start a dialogue about male sexual assault, then in the long run I think it was worth it. We’re human, we lash out when we’re in pain, but pain is the source of all change_

Evidently it’s not a controversial opinion in the slightest because the tweet has 20,000 likes.

That’s when Eddie deactivates his account.

Nothing will be gained from this. Richie sacrificed part of himself for nothing. Now it will follow him for the rest of his life whether he likes it or not, and no one will have learned a single goddamn thing.

Eddie lies in bed for another three hours, listening to the sirens, helicopters, and firecrackers that always precede the early morning traffic. The sun begins to rise. His alarm goes off. He gets up, takes a shower, gets dressed, then rides the elevator down to the lobby and steps outside with the sun beaming into his eyes. While walking towards the subway he can’t help but wonder how many of the people around him tweeted about Richie, or at the very least threw in a like or retweet. Statistically he’s probably passed by dozens, if not more. Complete strangers who are now carrying on as normal, and Eddie finds himself growing irrationally angry, as if they were flaunting their invisibility.

He arrives at Myra’s attorney’s office three minutes late, looking so haggard he probably can’t even get away with blaming it on the jet lag. As far as he knows, Myra hasn’t informed her lawyer about Richie’s identity, or the fact that Eddie’s in a relationship at all. She just factually informed her lawyer that her husband is gay, and therefore their differences indeed irreconcilable. They don’t have any children or major assets, so the paperwork is simple enough. All Eddie has to do is sign his name and initial the correct boxes, and just like that he’s no longer an adulterer.

He shakes hands with the attorney and gives Myra a cordial nod. He wonders how much she knows, if anything. As far as he knows, she’s never touched Twitter a day in her life, but the events of yesterday have long since bled into the mainstream news. And when he looks her in the eye before walking out the door, he can tell. She knows. But he can’t figure out what she’s thinking. He’s never been that intuitive.

Eddie steps through the revolving door and back onto the busy sidewalk. He adjusts his sunglasses, which at least he doesn’t feel stupid about wearing since it really is bright as shit. Then he hails a cab to take him back to the hotel, and after getting situated he pulls out his phone to check the news. He's planning to read some article about Congress, the environment, homicide, all the usual shit, but instead, when he opens the New York Times app the article sitting at the top of his feed reads as follows:

_Comedian Adam Jiang Follows Richie Tozier in Accusing Talent Agent Terrence Clark of Sexual Assault_

Well, he sure as shit didn’t see that coming.

By the time Eddie checks out of his hotel two more victims have come forward. Eddie refreshes his newsfeed the entire way to the airport, skimming each new article as they pop up by the minute. Another accuser comes forward just as he’s boarding his plane, and by the time he lands in LA there are six in total. The accusations range from casual harassment to stories remarkably similar to Richie’s own, and most importantly, at least two of the allegations are within the statute of limitations.

“Hey, how’s he doing?” Eddie asks Bill after rolling his suitcase into the corner and taking off his sunglasses.

“He’s good. He’s um… really hungover for one thing.”

Eddie gives a soft laugh, a nervous impulse. “Does he know what’s going on?” he asks, quietly.

Bill nods. “Yeah, he told me to keep him updated if anything really important came up. And I figured this qualified. So yeah, he’s pretty up to speed.”

Eddie nods, thankful that he doesn’t have to be the one to fill him in.

“And how’s he taking it?”

Bill shrugs. “I don’t know. He hasn’t been talking much. We brought in an emergency counselor earlier and I think it might’ve helped. He’s hanging out on the back porch now.”

Eddie sighs, suddenly aware of how viciously exhausted he is.

“Thanks for helping him.”

“Yeah, of course. I want to help you guys however I can. And hey, my next book’s definitely getting me cancelled, so you guys better do the same for me.”

Eddie laughs, then rubs a hand over his red and sticky eyes.

Richie’s sitting on the wooden bench hanging from one of the crosshatched beams that cover the porch. He raises his head when Eddie steps out, and smiles so gently that Eddie’s not sure if he can properly return it.

“What’re you drinking?” Eddie asks, noticing the glass bottle in Richie’s hand.

Richie holds it up to stare at the label. “I don’t know. It’s some coconut, ginseng, hippie water shit. Audra swears by it for hangovers.”

Richie’s voice is quieter than usual.

“Is it any good?” Eddie asks while walking over and carefully taking a seat by his side.

“Eh, it’s so expensive you could probably feed a family of twelve, but yeah, it’s alright.” He takes another sip, grimaces, then swallows with a pronounced gulp.

Richie pushes his foot against the deck, making the swing move back and forth in a gentle rock. Eddie remembers learning how to swing as a kid. Legs out then back in, rolling the seat up the chain to raise it higher, watching Richie lean back until his head was hanging upside down, and smiling when Eddie was brave enough to do the same.

Eddie wants to ask him how he’s feeling, but he has a suspicion that Richie’s not entirely sure himself. Eddie’s own feelings and opinions are changing on a second by second basis. The world’s moving too fast for him, and he needs to catch his breath.

If Richie hadn’t revealed his past, then the other victims wouldn’t have come forward. That’s causation, not correlation. And now Clark could very well go to prison, something Richie always thought was beyond the realm of possibility. And yet, Eddie’s already seen people in the mainstream news using backhanded language to imply that what happened yesterday was just a necessary evil. If that woman hadn’t uploaded the video, if Richie hadn’t been dog-piled, if he hadn’t been forced to reveal his trauma, then a serial sex offender would have continued walking free. Logically Eddie knows you can’t go around doing shitty things on the justification that your actions just might set off some butterfly effect that will bring about world peace, but that’s probably not the lesson most people are going to take from this.

The people who tore Richie apart will probably feel vindicated, and carry on repeating their behavior again and again. And that’s frustrating, infuriatingly so. But still, the man who hurt Richie is getting what he deserves, so was it worth it? Eddie supposes that’s not something he has a right to decide. That right belongs to Richie.

Eddie takes over the task of keeping the swing moving. Richie occasionally takes a drink, staring out at Bill’s manicured lawn. He looks tired, older than he is, and Eddie can’t believe how fucking strong he is. If their positions were reversed, Eddie would have crumpled like a scrap of aluminum in a car compactor. He probably would have thrown in the towel well over a decade ago. The fact that Richie’s still breathing is evidence that he’s braver than Eddie could ever hope to be.

“I missed you,” Richie says quietly, then reaches over in search of Eddie’s hand, which he gives without complaint. The swing keeps moving, the squeaking of the chains filling their silence. Eddie runs his thumb along Richie’s knuckles, trying to focus on how lucky they are to still be here at all.

That night Richie cries like Eddie’s never seen him cry before. It was physical agony, like a burst appendix or a broken femur, the bruises around his neck constricting with every sob.


	10. Chapter 10

Pain has been a chronic companion for as long as Richie can remember, yet he was always reluctant to treat it as anything more than a symptom of his own bad decisions. There was a comfort in blaming himself for his own unhappiness, as that gave him the power to make it go away at any time, in theory at least.

After a decade with no improvement, he was forced to let go of that security blanket, at which point he adapted by writing off his pain as nothing more than a common ailment, like a bad knee: something treatable if not curable. He was human, and very fortunate, so yeah, he deserved to suffer a bit. That was only fair.

Or at least that’s what he always told himself. Until Eddie held his face and cried that he was wrong. He didn’t deserve to suffer, and if he kept thinking that way it would get him killed, and it almost did.

Richie wants to be happy so fucking badly. He wants to feel thankful and euphoric that the man who hurt him all those years ago is finally getting punished and won’t be able to hurt anyone else. But no matter how hard he tries to rip apart his thoughts and correctly stitch them back together, he can’t find the happiness he’s due. That must mean there’s something wrong with him, right?

“No,” Eddie cries. “No there’s fucking not.”

Richie knows that telling himself he doesn’t deserve to feel pain because others have it worse will do nothing except cause this infection in his brain to fester and bleed, but he can’t help it. That’s all he knows how to do. Even when he was a little kid and went days or weeks without touching his parents he was still too ashamed to open his mouth and complain because at least they weren’t hitting him. And what right does he have to complain about anything at a time like this? The man who raped him could be in prison by this time next year. That’s all that matters. Why is he still hung up on shit that isn’t even real?

Maybe it’s because if all this had happened a year ago then Richie wouldn’t even have the option to enjoy his retribution because he would be dead. That’s a truth he’s sure the public won’t be enthusiastic to swallow. If the events of the past week had happened a year ago, then Richie would be gone. He would have deactivated, locked his doors, and hung himself off the bannister. No question, that’s how they would have found him. His only legacy would be joining that prestigious Wikipedia page titled _American Male Comedians Who Committed Suicide_. Yes, there’s a whole-ass page dedicated to it, and Richie’s met a few of the names up there.

God, Richie could have fucked up so many people’s lives, normal people and celebrities alike. He fantasized about screenshotting a hundred-odd tweets from the depths of the maelstrom, preferably ones attached to real names, especially blue checkmarks and anyone with PhD, MD, or any fucking initialism appended to their handle, then laying them with the blame for his death and forcing them to flounder and scramble as they were finally confronted with their precious accountability. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. Because he’s better than that. If nothing else, he can walk out of this mess with his dignity and decency still intact.

Richie knows he has a right to his pain – the right to feel whatever his body needs. But he also knows that if he reemerges into the public eye anything less than overjoyed he’ll be perceived as an ungrateful piece of shit. He doesn’t need a social media manager to tell him that much. But god, he’d give anything to feel that way. He’d love nothing more than to excise this fucking misery and replace it with gratitude. Give him the instruction manual and he’ll fucking do it. Sure, of course he’s glad he motivated others to come forward, but he can’t just wipe the spit off his chest and waltz down to Vice News to muse about how beautiful and wonderful social media is for bringing justice to himself and others, not when it almost got him killed.

“I can’t fucking do it,” he sobs into Eddie’s lap.

“Can’t do what?” he asks.

Anything. He can’t forgive the people who did this to him, no matter how noble their justifications or tragic their backstories. He can’t act the part of the perfect model victim just to appease the people who will turn on him the second he steps out of line. He knows any sympathy people may afford him in his absence will run dry the moment he fails to conform to their expectations. Even if only a vocal minority voice their distaste aloud, the rest will still be thinking it, privately lamenting that they got stuck with him as their poster boy instead of someone more worthy of their sympathy. 

Hell, he knows that plenty of the concerned citizens who jumped on the bandwagon would love nothing more than to watch him reactivate his account and start bitching about cancel culture, because then they’ll get to write him off as just another rich, white celebrity whining about how the big bad internet hurt his feelings, and any guilt they might harbor for the things they said will be absolved. But Richie’s not letting them off the hook that fucking easy.

He’s smart; he knows how this shit works. He also knows that any criticism of the people who attacked him will be scooped up by the far-right and twisted into some mangled narrative, his words distorted and weaponized without his consent. And he knows there are plenty of people in the comedy scene and country at large waiting with baited breath for him to unleash his tirade on the PC millennials eating their own, but they’re shit out of luck. He’s been doing standup for twenty fucking years and not once has he publicly parroted that tired line about how people are just too sensitive these days, and he’s not about to start now. He still has his fucking dignity; above all else, he won’t lose that too.

No, he’s going to build his life with Eddie and he’s going to feel whatever the fuck he wants to feel. He’s not going to censor his emotions or lie by omission or repress them until he chokes just because he’s lucky enough not to be on the brink of starvation, but he’ll finally let himself mourn for all the times that he was. He’s going to be angry, outraged even. He’s going to feel every fucking emotion he’s denied himself for so long. The ugliest ones, the most controversial ones, and no one outside of his self-made family has the right to hear a single goddamn word of it.

He’s not letting them touch him again. He’s indulged them for the last decade and now they’ve reached their quota and he’s pulling the plug. If they want to write a dissertation on why he’s a terrible person they’ll have to print it out and send it to his management so they can have the honor of shredding it on his behalf. He refuses to be anyone’s mascot, effigy, or maladjusted therapy tool. He’s a fucking entertainer. He makes drunk people laugh. That’s his job, and nothing more. He’s going to do the job he gets paid for and if people want to blame him for every terrible thing in this fucked up world then he can’t stop them, but he’s not going to let them touch him.

He cries in Bill’s guest room well into the morning. It’s painful, but he can’t make himself stop. And Eddie sits there and presses a hand to his forehead to try to relieve some of the pressure while holding icepacks to his skin.

Richie will never break free from the conviction that every awful thing that happened to him could have been avoided had he just made better decisions. But at the very least, he clung to the certainty that no matter what mistakes he made, he was still better than the people who raped him. But then a million strangers on a microblogging app told him that he was wrong.

How do you recover from that? Psychologically, neurologically, what’s the prognosis? His mental defenses aren’t that strong. His skin is thinner than tissue paper. Being attacked for jokes is par for the course. Humor is subjective, and volatile; it’ll offend some and delight others, and that’s never going to change. Attack his comedy, attack his writing, he’s been dealing with that his entire career and he can take it.

But this was different. Once they knew what he was, once he gave them an opening, they knew exactly where to cut. He remembers being thirteen and realizing something was happening inside him, and it felt so beautiful and hurt so much. In Chicago there was a gay bar he passed by every night on his walk home, and he always told himself that if he could just summon the courage to step inside, then everything would be okay. If he could just open the door, sit down, and order a drink, then everything would fall into place.

But once he finally managed to open the door, everyone inside screamed at the top of their lungs that they didn’t want him. They would never want him. And if he wanted to make the world a better place, the single most selfless act would be putting a bullet through his head. After all, if he hurt so many people, intentional or not, how was he any better than the people who hurt him?

It takes days for Richie’s brain to recover to the point where he can definitely say that’s complete fucking bullshit. No joke would make him comparable to the man who left him unconscious in his own vomit on that checkered carpet in a Wicker Park basement. No joke, no outdated word, no misphrased tweet, no bad interview would ever put him in the same rank as the man who strangled him on the kitchen floor after he accidentally dropped their leftovers. No joke, no matter how crude, offensive, or tasteless will ever put him within a thousand miles of those people, or any of their kind.

He knows this, and he’ll repeat it to himself again and again so he doesn’t forget.

He turns down every interview. New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, no comment, no comment, no comment. And after three days of barely leaving their room and eating little more than the plates of watermelon Bill’s been leaving outside their door, Richie asks Eddie if he wants to get out of LA for a while, and Eddie says yes so quickly that Richie can’t help but laugh.

Later that evening Eddie opens his laptop to look up some property listings, but once they’re mutually staring at the empty search bar, they realize there’s nowhere else they particularly want to be.

_Derry Maine real estate_

Eddie types it into Google, and they start scrolling through the listings without any further debate.

Was Derry an ideal option? No, of course not. With its Republican local government, terrible restaurant options, and broke-ass sewer system, it’s just about the worst place in the country they could possibly relocate. But for some reason moving to the town that bred their deepest fears sounds more appealing than hanging out in LA and running the risk of bumping into an acquaintance who subtweeted him at the grocery store.

And with Derry at least they know what they’re getting. They can’t be deceived by the rosy color-corrected photos on the agency websites. They know how to get around, where to put their feet in the river, and how long it takes to get to the airport. Besides, it’s only temporary. They just need to get the fuck out of here for a while, take a vacation back to the real world.

Eddie packs up his desk at work with little fanfare. A few of his coworkers circle around to say goodbye, but none suggest staying in touch, not even as a courtesy. Richie doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going except for Steve, Donna, his lawyer, and a handful of friends with razor-thin ties to the industry. There are a few others he’ll keep in touch with, but word travels fast in these circles, and he doesn’t want the friends he still has faith in to let him down. He’s still bitter that none of them rose up to defend him, even though he understands why they couldn’t, and if he were in their shoes, he couldn’t have either. But still, it stings, and it might take him a while to get over it.

It takes five days for them to drive across the country, and they arrive in Derry on a Tuesday with as little ceremony as when they left. The house they’re renting is about ninety years old: red brick, decorative molding, arched doorways, altogether it’s slightly larger than their house in LA, and about a seventh the price. Richie never thought he’d be one of those asshole celebrities to own more than one house, but after seeing it in person he can’t imagine giving it up just to return to the golf-encased ugly patchwork of LA.

They arrive on the evening of July 3rd. It’s too late to go out and buy a mattress, so they lay several blankets on the bedroom floor and splay out underneath the ceiling fan. There’s no air conditioning, but neither of them expected to need it. They never had it while growing up, but somehow they managed to forget how muggy and humid the summers could get, although if they dug up the raw statistics they could probably blame global warming.

The next day is July 4th, so they sit on the small balcony off their bedroom and watch the modest firework display that the fire department has been putting on every year since they were kids.

At first Richie requests a therapist who knows jackshit about social media, which in Derry isn’t hard to find, but he only makes it through two sessions before requesting a referral.

“He’s sixty and doesn’t go online for anything except to look at pictures of his grandkids. He has no fucking clue what it’s like. He tried telling me that because I’m not actually seeing any of it I’m catastrophizing it in my head, but I know that’s not true. I know what people are like.”

“You’re right,” Eddie replies, factually.

His next therapist is only thirty-one and just recently got her certification. Eddie was skeptical about hiring someone with so little experience, but she ends up being a much better fit. She’s funny, down to earth, and as an added bonus, she specialized in studying the effects of social media on teenagers. Richie’s a bit outside of her target age range, but they click without effort.

Richie figured he’d spend their first couple sessions blowing off some steam by bitching about his long and sordid history with social media, but he barely lasts five minutes before his brain starts burning like an overheated engine and he has to switch to discussing his parents’ alcoholism just to calm down.

“Is it fucked up that talking about my parents’ drinking problem is easier than repeating some shit a pornstar tweeted at me?”

“Did your parents ever say anything as awful to you as that pornstar?”

“Well, they weren’t exactly churning out positive affirmations, but at least they never told me I deserved to be raped.”

Eddie sets up his remote office. Summer comes and goes. A neighbor several houses down has a litter of kittens, and once they’re old enough to leave their mother, he and Eddie pick out two brothers: a sturdy fluffball who’s a royal shade of blue and a scrawny white and grey boy with the fluffiest tail who’s obviously the runt of the litter. They still haven’t brought up the possibility of children, but they seem to be in silent agreement that parenthood will never be in the cards for them. There are some fears that therapy, medication, and time can’t resolve.

They put up a hammock in the backyard, but discover that they can’t lie in it for as long as when they were kids. Their necks and backs usually start aching within forty-five minutes or so, but they still like to lie out there while the sun is setting before the mosquitoes drive them back inside.

Eddie checks Richie’s email for him, but there’s rarely anything worth discussing. Steve keeps them updated when new offers come around. Some charity wants to interview him for a promotional video. HBO wants to send him some pages for a guest role. Some new adult cartoon wants to bring him on as a writer. He turns them all down, and doesn’t lose any sleep over it.

Streaks of grey start growing in his beard with disturbing regularity. Eddie discovers that practice will make you a good cook, but not a great one. Clark’s trial gets scheduled for eight months down the line, and Richie has agreed to contribute however he can. The weather starts cooling off, and before they know it, a full year has passed since they took down the clown, and Richie jokes about pouring a bottle of whiskey down the toilet to pay their respects.

They don’t keep up with the news very well. Sometimes they hang out in the antique shop downtown and shoot the shit with the owner. They run into their old fourth grade teacher, who’s now in her sixties and just married her partner of thirty-two years. Neither of them have been brave enough to step foot in the Falcon, but apparently they have bi-weekly amateur standup nights, which would be a poetic venue for a comeback to say the least.

All in all, it feels like they’re settling into a sense of normalcy, if anything in Derry can be called normal. And before they know it, Christmas is only three days away.

They’ve already received a dozen packages from the other Losers, who are all flying in starting tomorrow. It turns out Derry’s the only one of their respective locations with snow, and apparently everyone’s ready and willing to return to clown murder central for the sake of that Hallmark pageant shit. But this time around none of them are brave enough to stay at the townhouse, and they’re all too bougie for the motel off the highway, so they’ll have to do some third grade math to figure out how to layer everybody.

All in all, their lives are boring, but nice. Richie knows he’ll have to go back eventually, but he’s reluctant to say goodbye to this small pocket of anonymity he’s managed to carve out for himself. But why should he have to sacrifice it? He’s an entertainer, not a politician. He’s not ethically obligated to keep himself wired into the mainframe. Why can’t he do his shit, walk offstage, and come home to this?

He turns these thoughts over in his head while sitting on the front porch. He’s decked out in the heavy coat he used to cart around whenever he did winter shows above the Mason-Dixon Line. One of the neighborhood cats that they suspect is Chip and Dale’s father is perched on the porch railing, staring intently at some creature scurrying in the snow. Finally he snaps and leaps down into the yard to chase whatever caught his eye. Richie smiles and takes a sip of his coffee. His anxiety has finally regressed to the point where he doesn’t have to drink decaf, which will probably be a short-lived achievement since his cortisol levels are guaranteed to skyrocket the second he steps foot at his first open mic.

He hears the door open, and turns to see Eddie step out onto the porch. He stands there for a moment to dramatically blow air into his hands as if he hasn’t been dealing with New York winters for the last sixteen years. Then he walks over to take a seat beside him and cringes as his ass touches the cold wood of the bench. They need to clean the place up before Ben and Bev get here tomorrow, or at least Eddie insists they do, although he seems keen on procrastinating just as hard as Richie, and apparently when you’re creeping up on forty-two procrastination involves sitting on your front porch like retired farmers and contemplating the beauty of your cul-de-sac.

“So, from a PR angle, how much longer am I supposed to hang out here in the woods before my big comeback?”

Richie stares down at the mug in his hands. He squeezes it a bit tighter, the warmth seeping into his palms.

“You think it’s time?” Eddie asks neutrally.

“I don’t know.” Richie shrugs. “I just can’t stand the thought of my Wikipedia article ending here. I know that’s a stupid reason, but I think about it every goddamn day.”

“What are you talking about? That’s a great reason.”

Richie gives a small laugh.

“I know it’s petty as shit, but hey, I got into comedy for petty reasons too. I started doing it because I was seeing this guy who was doing amateur standup and kept stealing my jokes, so I wanted to prove I could do it better.”

Eddie actually laughs at that, causing the lines around his eyes to crinkle.

“So if you got into comedy out of spite, why not go back to it for the same reason?”

Richie exhales, blowing a stream of warm vapor into the air.

“I’m not twenty anymore. I can’t make all my big life decisions based on showing up people I hate.”

“Yes you can. It’s easy. And very rewarding.”

Richie smiles before taking another sip of coffee, and it suddenly occurs to him that he’s been drinking it for the past ten minutes without once thinking about his throat. For a couple weeks after his Twitter drama he couldn’t eat, drink, or swallow pills without fixating on the phantom sensation of being choked, but now it rarely crosses his mind except in unpleasant flashes. He supposes that’s progress.

“But if I go back everyone’s going to expect me to do some _Nanette_ knock-off special, and I don’t fucking want to do that.”

“Then don’t. That’s been done, and it gets old real quick.”

“But I can’t just get up onstage and start making jokes about airline food when everyone there bought a ticket to watch me read my fucking diary. They’ll just spend the whole show waiting for me to get to the good shit. And when I don’t they’ll give me a two-star review and accuse me of "not using my platform." What the fuck does that even mean? Who’s handing out these goddamn platforms? If it’s just about social media then every Facebook mom with a handful of essential oils has a bigger platform than me.”

“Then just start your act by saying upfront that you’re not going to talk about any of that shit. If they come in expecting a one-man SVU episode tell them to get the fuck out.”

“But what am I supposed to talk about then?”

It’s an honest question, and one he’s been struggling to answer for the last six months. If he goes back to his old schtick everyone will just be confused and put off. If he makes any jokes about his online inquisition then people will politicize every punchline to suit their agenda. And if he tries to rebrand himself as some progressive queer icon then he’ll just be setting himself up for another cancellation. What options does that leave him with?

Fuck, he hates that he has to dedicate this mental energy in the first place. All he wants is to make people laugh. It’s ridiculous that he has to play these games of political 3D chess all for a profession as absurd and categorically stupid as standup comedy.

“You should talk about me,” Eddie states matter-of-factly. “Tell them all about how I single-handedly caused the 2008 financial crisis.”

“You know, you’ve made that joke so many times I’m starting to think you’re just confessing.”

“Glad you’re catching on. But seriously, just do what the _Nanette_ thing was originally supposed to be: a full hour talking about one batshit person. You can squeeze an hour out of me, right?”

“I couldn’t even squeeze five minutes out of you last night.”

“See, right there you have your opening joke.”

Richie actually bends forward laughing and has to hold out his coffee so it doesn’t spill. In an instant he can envision the joke landing perfectly. The crowd would love it, and if there’s anyone in the world capable of churning out an hour of comedy gold, it’s Eddie. But then again, Eddie values his privacy more than his 401k. Would he really be comfortable with Richie airdropping his dirty laundry all over Netflix?

“Eds, I know you’re kind of a masochist where it counts, but would you really be cool with me roasting your dick for an hour on an international streaming service?”

“If it means you don’t have to say jackshit about yourself, then yes. And if anyone accuses you of not using your platform or some shit that just proves they came in hoping for trauma porn. Don’t give it to them. Give them me instead. And hey, if I’m your only target they can’t accuse you of punching down on anyone else. It’s foolproof.”

Richie looks at him in amazement. It’s such a simple solution, so complete and elegant. And Eddie’s right, Richie could easily get an hour of material out of him. He could direct a whole fucking film trilogy and write an eight hundred-page biography on the enigma that is Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Okay, but I’m giving you a writer’s credit because the world deserves to know how fucking funny you are. Also that way they can’t accuse me of verbally abusing you.”

“Good plan. And if we aren’t cancelled by the end of it, then we didn’t try hard enough.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth. But hey, before I go back we should probably get married, right?”

The words seem to fall out of his mouth involuntarily. He clutches the mug between his palms as he bites back his impulse to laugh it off and change the subject. He honest to god wasn’t planning to say that. Sure, he was planning to ask Eddie eventually, but figured there was no rush.

Suddenly he realizes they’ve never properly stated their preferences on marriage. What if one was enough for Eddie? What if he’s nervous about getting tied down again? What if–

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Eddie replies, as casual as if they were picking out a movie, but his smile is so bright that Richie can only glance his way for a second before he has to turn his eyes back to the snowbanks lining their driveway. Richie feels like he just shed a layer of plaque that’s been encasing his body since childhood.

“What kind of wedding were you thinking?” Eddie asks, as if they made this decision months ago and have just been procrastinating on working out the logistics.

“I don’t know,” Richie answers with a shrug. “I don’t really have a preference where we do it. A park, city hall, the Church of Scientology, I don’t give a shit. But I think we should do it here in Derry.”

Richie’s not sure how Eddie will feel about that suggestion. They’re cumulatively wealthy enough that they could get married virtually anywhere in the world, yet Richie can’t imagine doing it anywhere besides this mangy little town. This is the place where they fell in love. It’s where they discovered their closest friends. It’s a town full of contradictions, simultaneously holding both their very best and very worst memories.

But more importantly, getting married here would be the ultimate form of revenge. As a teenager Richie didn’t think he would live past thirty. Simply surviving one day to the next was so excruciating that marriage seemed like an impossible concept not even worth a daydream. The summer after graduation the kids in their class began tossing out marriage proposals like it was prom, but for Richie the prospect of legally tying himself to a man he loved seemed no more real than the hallucinations conjured up by the clown.

But now it’s his reality. Somehow he survived long enough to propose to Eddie Kaspbrak on the porch of their home in the town that tried to kill them many times over. The ground didn’t split open, the sky didn’t turn to blood, and Eddie didn’t disappear. This town tried to teach them that misery was inescapable, but somewhere along the way they managed to call bullshit. They ran away, came back, left again, then returned of their own free will, and now Richie’s the happiest he's ever been in his life, and getting married feels like the one final fuck you he needs to tie off the suture.

“Yeah, I think you’re right” Eddie replies, his smile breathtaking.

“And not because I love this place so goddamn much,” Richie clarifies. “No, this is spite. This town fucked me up so hard, but I still won.”

Richie closes his eyes and focuses on trapping the certainty of that statement, refusing to let any doubt creep through the cracks. It’s not just an empty affirmation. Richie did win. Against all odds, he’s still alive. Maybe he’ll never shake this latent certainty that all his misery was deserved, but if he managed to survive his parents, homicidal bullies, multiple abusers, the entertainment industry, a killer space clown, and Twitter, then there’s not much left that can tear him down.

Eddie reaches over to grab his hand and squeeze it tight.

“Richie Tozier, I would be so fucking honored to marry you out of spite.”


End file.
